Saving Fire
by be-nice-to-nerds
Summary: Johanna thought that life would get better after her Games. But then the Quarter Quell rolls around, and now she's stuck risking her own life to save that of a girl she doesn't even remotely like. Karma just hates her that much.
1. Prologue

**So here it is, the promised sequel to **_**From Fearful to Fearsome**_**. This is in a different narrative POV and a shorter length than my usual chapters because it's a prologue; normal chapters will be back next update.**

**New readers – although it's a sequel, you probably don't need to be familiar with my previous works to get this.**

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><p>Johanna Mason strides up the stairs, head held high, glaring at anyone who dares to look at her. Everyone knows she's been forced to come here, but she's not going to give anyone the satisfaction of letting them see her be cowed. She acts like the tough as nails Victor, not like the weakling she pretended to be, and the change, like her short hair, is still new enough that it works. No one ever expects her, of all Victors, to be the one glaring daggers at them.<p>

She's still not over Rowan's death, but she won't let them see that.

So she marches straight up the outer steps of Snow's mansion, acting like she owns the place. And it sort of works. Her plain District garb contrasts with the decadent design of the mansion, the brown and green fabric like a patch of mossy dirt against the immaculate whiteness of the marble. Even so, it fits in a twisted way, the girl from the Districts and her place in the palace.

She doesn't know how twisted yet, but she soon will.

She has a knife in her belt. It's never left her side since her Games, exactly six months ago. She still dreams of falling most nights. Of falling endlessly into the blue void. In reality it was Abbie, the heartless girl from District Three, but in her dreams it is always her. They end, without fail, before she hits the forcefield.

Vince pretends not to notice and keeps up his unceasing optimism. It's the only thing that keeps them both sane.

In turn, she pretends not to notice the way everyone looks at her now – like she's something other than human. Before the Games, they'd always thought of her as Vincent Somers' older cousin; now she's a Victor, she should be thought of in her own right. But people are people. Vince is more likeable, more recognisable, more relatable. His cousin might have their respect – and gratitude for a years worth of food – but Vince has their genuine affection, even more noticeable now that it contrasts with how they treat her.

Johanna glares at the first attendant to try to show her on her way and it takes more than one subtle threat before she finally resigns herself that Snow wants to play the power game. Well if he really insists on showing what they already know, then fine. She's not going to like it, and he's going to see she doesn't like it, but there's no point in pissing off the most powerful man in Panem. It's not like he can have her killed or something.

The message she got was phrased like a request, but it was obviously an order instead. _The president would much appreciate your company in his mansion. Please arrive at your leisure._ It doesn't take a genius to figure that 'at your leisure' is Capitol-code for 'right now', but even so Johanna made sure to dawdle a bit. She wants to show Snow that she's not completely at his beck and call.

So now, an hour and a half later, she's standing outside the doors of his office and trying not to show how intimidated she really is. If the president wants to see her it can't be good. She goes through a mental file of what she's done recently – no, nothing that could be this serious. Johanna Mason has been a good little girl since her Games. No, not a peep out of her.

"Ah, finally, Miss Mason. Do come in."

He's speaking, and he's actually trying to be cordial. If anything, this sets Johanna even more on edge. Snow has no reason to be nice to her, has no reason to want her company that isn't bad. At first she speculated that he just wanted to congratulate her, but almost immediately ruled that out. She isn't that naïve.

But she can't really do much else, can she, so she comes in and takes a seat without being asked.

"Why am I here?" she asks him bluntly. She never has been one to mince words.

"To get my sincerest congratulations on your Victory, of course. And for… others among your benefactors to offer their best wishes."

"Snowspeech," she responds immediately, forgetting exactly where she is.

Snow just looks amused. "While I am exceedingly honoured that my name has found its way into the common vernacular, we are not here to discuss linguistic developments, Miss Mason. As I was saying, there are many in the Capitol celebrating your Victory."

"Maybe, but that's not why you called me here. If you just wanted to tell me that then you would have sent a message. So hurry up and get on with it, will you? I'd kind of like to be off home now, thanks."

The president does not react. Johanna thinks that's worse, really, than anything else he could do. This way is just unnerving.

"I do appreciate the nature of time nowadays. There never does quite seem to be enough of it, does there? I can imagine you would be quite eager to reunite with your cousin, would you not?"

He's right, but she knows better than to affirm it. Snow's up to something – she just wishes she knew what.

"In which case, I will attempt to convey this message as quickly and succinctly as possible. There are those among my populace who were very glad at the outcome of the Sixty Ninth Hunger Games. Several of these people have taken a special interest in you, and would like to celebrate your success further. With you."

_Special interest_. Something about the phrase sets Johanna on edge, but she's not quite sure why. After all, the phrase is completely innocent – yet there's something about it. Something threatening. She just can't figure out what yet.

"Then let them come along to one of those parties I keep getting forced to go to. They can celebrate there. Don't see what's stopping them."

"I am afraid the celebration intended by them is not of the type commonly seen at that type of party."

Now she's just confused, and it must show on her face, because President Snow sighs.

"They wish for you to… how should I put it? Consummate the special relationship between sponsor and tribute?"

It takes almost a minute before it clicks. Even then, she starts with the denial. _No. No, he can't possibly… No way. This kind of thing just doesn't happen anymore. Right?_

Then she realises the truth and it takes all her self control not to pull that knife out of her belt and throw it. It probably wouldn't do much – she always was terrible at knife throwing – but it would at least make her feel better. Though it would end up much worse for her in the long run, so she for once in her life thinks before acting impulsively if not before speaking.

"Fuck you."

And Snow laughs. The bastard just sits there and laughs. "Oh, Johanna, I hardly think it is me you will be fucking."

She snaps. Her hand tightens around the hilt of the knife, but she doesn't draw it. It's a new, cold anger, snapping, and she sees with more clarity than she ever has before.

"No."

He's taken aback, she can see it. Good, she thinks viciously.

"I beg your pardon?"

"No. I'm not doing it. And you can't make me." Her voice is cold, firm, and flat. Resolute. Because she's not doing it, she's not anyone's whore, and there isn't a thing Snow can do about it.

"On the contrary, Miss Mason, I rather think I can." He picks up a remote lying on the desk next to him, and a television screen that had gone unnoticed switches on. Images start to flicker over it, all images of one particular person with dark hair and green eyes. Over the images, Snow begins to narrate.

"Vincent Somers. Twelve years old – thirteen in exactly a month and three days, I believe. Your only remaining relative, and I have heard the two of you are very close. It would be such a pity if he were to die at such a young age – but be assured, Miss Mason, that it can and will happen if you do not obey me."

"No. No, it's not going to happen."

He smirks. "Ah, so you do choose my way after all."

"That's where you're wrong," says Johanna, an icy calm settling over her. In the back of her head is a tiny voice screaming at her to stop this now and to just go along with the president, but she ignores it. "If you have such good records on Vince, then check them again. What do you know about Vincent Somers, Snow? Do you know what will happen if you kill him?"

She continues without waiting for an answer. "You'll have an uprising on your hands, that's what. The District doesn't care what you do to me; they might respect me, but none of them like me. But Vince… Vince is another story. Everyone knows him. Everyone. Anyone who knew me before the Games would've known me as his cousin, most still think of me as that, I bet. Vince's cousin who won the Games. Everyone knows him, and everyone likes him.

"And if you kill him, you'll have an uprising on your hands. It won't take much – all I have to do is tell the truth of what goes on here, tell everyone that Vince died because you tried to force me into being a whore at sixteen, and you'll have all of District Seven in rebellion. And once one District gets started… I'm no expert, but I reckon you'd have the whole country in rebellion. Whole country in rebellion, wouldn't want that.

"So I don't whore myself out for you, and you leave Vince alone, and you'll be fine. But if he dies… if he dies now, if he dies in six months time, if he dies in three years. I'll tell people, and they'll believe me. So you chose – me, or Panem."

She storms out of there without waiting to be dismissed, stomping down the steps like she owns the place. It's only once she's out of sight of the mansion that she lets herself break down, shivering uncontrollably at the thought of what she's done. She's just gambled away her cousin's life. It had better have worked.

And it does, surprisingly enough. For almost five whole years life goes on for Vincent and Johanna. He hears about what she did, listens as understandingly as a twelve year old can. They have a few years of happiness.

It wouldn't have worked if she were anyone else, Johanna knows. But she's Johanna Mason, and someone who can act as convincingly as she does scares people, as does the real her she's barely been allowed to show. And she's not that attractive – not hideous, but certainly nothing special, and she doesn't try to be any better looking than she is. Definitely no Finnick Odair or Cashmere de Montfort. If she'd been one of them neither Vince nor her would have stood a chance.

But as it is, she gets away with it. Not enough people want to buy her to be worth it, so she and Vince get a few years of peace. Until the Seventy Fourth Hunger Games, anyway, where Snow takes his revenge. By now it's late enough that no one will take anything Johanna tells them about that night seriously. So Vince goes off to the Games, and leaves Johanna alone.

She still doesn't do it – Snow's run out of people to threaten her with. He tries Minty, but the two of them have drifted apart enough and Johanna has enough blood on her hands already that it doesn't work.

Small consolation, that.

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><p><strong>Now hear me out, before I get all the messages yelling about how things wouldn't have gone that way. I have tried to make it seem as believable as possible, but I am well aware that Johanna getting away with what she just did is pushing things.<strong>

**I'm only sixteen. I honestly just don't think I have the emotional maturity to handle having to write the aftermath of forced prostitution, which in this case is basically institutionalised rape. This is a subject that needs to be handled sensitively and maturely, and I don't think that I would be able to do justice to any of the scenes. This would not only offend actual rape victims and probably take away from the actual severe impact something like that would surely have on the person involved, but also detract from the overall quality and emotional depth of the story. Some things can't be trivialised, but I'm afraid that if I tried to write this happening to Johanna then it would be.**

**So that was the reasoning behind my decision to get Johanna out of having to sell herself. I think – well, sincerely hope – you can at least see where I'm coming from there. But at the same time, I did have to deal with the issue – so a scene where Johanna confronts President Snow only to end in all her family dead, while cliché, is pretty much the best – and only realistic - way to go.**

**But this is where my Johanna differs from a lot of the other portrayals I've seen of her. This Johanna has been traumatised by an awful childhood far before her Games. **_**From Fearful to Fearsome**_** opens with her and Vince in the District Seven Community Centre, orphaned. And honestly, I think that a slow wearing away at her works better to make her the character we see in the books than all of her family dying at once. So unlike some others, all I have to work with is Vince.**

**Now here comes the bit where I must admit I'm quite a big fan of keeping things in continuity. With the exception of **_**Named**_**, all of my THG works fit in the same continuity as each other, as well as slightly more loosely into the works of Caisha702 and PK9. These multi-chapters spanning Johanna's life slot into my oneshot **_**No One Left**_**, which was written far before anyone predicted what bombshell Mockingjay would drop on us. I could have just ignored it, but it wouldn't feel right.**

**A big part of my Johanna's character is the fact that Vince dies in the same Games Katniss Everdeen wins. I'd had it in the back of my mind while writing FF and while planning this one out. I didn't want to lose that plot point, both because it would significantly change a lot of both Johanna's characterisation and parts of the plot as well as taking this out of continuity. So I compromised, and used bits of Vince's characterisation that had already existed ever since his conception – not yet as Johanna Mason's cousin – way back in **_**Cripple**_**, and combined that with the fact that not everyone's a supermodel; despite the fact that we tend to imagine everyone who isn't specifically stated to be ugly as good looking, most people aren't, especially District people by Capitol standards. **

**So President Snow doesn't call her bluff – and bluffing she is - because it's not worth it to him to do so. Johanna's abrasive personality and nothing more than average looks mean he wouldn't get that much money on her, so he doesn't get revenge, not straight away. Yet at the same time he does need to show her that disrespecting him won't be tolerated – it's no coincidence Vince gets Reaped that year. In fact, he deliberately stretches it out to hurt her more once she lets her guard down.**

**Most of this last part is in the story anyway, but I figured it would be worth restating. This is why I chose to act how I did; feel free to tell me if you still take offence to it, but I don't want to have to explain myself over and over in review replies.**

**And just to rephrase this again: I'm not a believer in ignoring the bits of canon I don't like, but at the same time I know I don't have the emotional maturity to deal with it realistically. This is the best compromise I could come up with while still maintaining internal consistency. I hope it came off alright.**


	2. Chapter 1

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter :) So yeah, here's the next chapter; updates should be fortnightly if Real Life doesn't decide to get in the way…**

**This fic, like pretty much all my others, fits loosely into the universe created by Caisha702 and added to by PK9; the difference between SF and FF is that here you're going to see a bit more of the worlds overlapping, especially in this chapter. If you've never read their stuff, while I do recommend it solely on merit of being good, none of the references are so necessary to the plot that you need to get them to know what's going on. But if you have read them then sit back and enjoy the references.**

**And one last thing - thanks very much to Caisha for helping me with bits of this chapter, as well as the usual second opinioning.  
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><p>I decide to join the Rebellion the day my cousin dies.<p>

It's the bloodbath of the Seventy Fourth Annual Hunger Games and the girl from Two sticks a knife in his stomach as he – like a moron, just like I told him _not_ to – runs towards the Cornucopia to try to pick up the axe he sees lying on a pile of weapons. I watch helpless from behind my screen in the Control Room as the last person I have left dies not a minute after being dumped in the Arena.

It takes all my self control not to visibly react to Vince's death, but I don't. Johanna Mason, here. You know, the girl who won the Games by _acting_? Yeah, that's me, and ever since then I've gotten very good at not giving people the reactions they want. Snow asks me to be a whore for him? I tell him to go get stuffed. To put it nicely.

And then, of course, he kills my cousin after waiting just long enough to let me get my guard down. That _bastard_.

So instead of doing what I want to do and killing someone – preferably Snow – I force myself to sit there and watch as Teagan, the girl Blight should be mentoring if he bothered turning up to the Control Room, dies too, three minutes and thirty two seconds later. Then I surprisingly calmly manage to get up and leave the room.

Volts from Three gives me a sympathetic look as I go, and it's very hard not to walk across the room and punch the guy straight in the glasses. I don't need anyone's pity. Especially not from the guy who I'm pretty sure told his tribute exactly who Vince is – was. How did he expect Vince to survive if everyone knew he's related to me?

Once I make it back to my room in the Mentors' wing of the Training Centre, it's a different story. Blight is sprawled across a couch, half unconscious. His drinking buddy from Five is collapsed with his face in a bowl of something noxious and probably alcoholic. The sight of the two of them sends my anger overboard.

I kick Blight in the side, hard. He doesn't react enough for me so I kick him in the groin instead, harder. This does get a reaction from him and he curls up into a ball whimpering in pain.

"Fight back, dammit," I yell, kicking him again, this time in the face. Blood spurts from his nose and spurs me on.

I don't know how many times I hit him. The only reason Blight doesn't die is because his drinking partner – whose name I still don't know – wakes up and pulls me off him.

"Snow, Mason, what the hell are you doing?"

I whirl around and punch him in the face, still caught up in the uncontrollable anger. I used to get this when Vince was alive, too, but that was always verbal. Not this sudden urge to murder.

And ultimately, it's the thought of my happy go lucky cousin and what he'd say if he could see me that causes me to stop. Vince wouldn't want this. He'd never liked that side of me, and while I have no intention of suddenly being all sweet and fluffy to everyone I meet I'm not going to turn into a monster either.

That's what Snow wants, and I've never done that before. If I do now I'll just be playing straight into his hands.

I'm still Johanna Mason though, and she never ever apologises. So I leave District Five reeling from the punch and Blight unconscious and bleeding on the floor and stalk out of the room. I head towards my own bedroom instead, where I utilise my old technique of hiding grief in the Capitol and have a long, long shower.

By the end of it I've let the realisation that I'm now truly alone sink in. Vince was the last person I had left, and now Snow's taken him from me too. By the end of the shower I've let the first influx of grief rush past too, and am left cold, hard and resolute.

Snow and the Capitol took everyone I ever loved from me, starting with my father and ending with Vince. Now I'm going to help take everything from them to.

I know that there's a rebellion brewing amongst some of the Victors, and that Bastin, the unofficial leader of our District, is right in the middle of it. I've been helping out for a while, just running messages for him. Nine times out of ten these messages are 'Bastin wants to see you'; I don't know anything else. But I do know I want to help, and now I don't care what I know, because now that Vince is dead there's nothing the Capitol can use against me.

Snow tried to use Vince's death to punish me and cripple me. Sucks for him, then, because he's just made his first mistake. Johanna Mason is angry, very angry, and now she has nothing to lose. The Capitol is going down, even if I have to die to make it happen.

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><p>To distract myself from Vince's death I return to the Control Room a few days later, just after the stupid Girl on Fire's knocked out most of the Arena with that Tracker Jacker nest. Cashmere de Montfort and her slightly less annoying brother Gloss are mentoring this year, and Cashmere's always fun to annoy. In the mood I'm in getting a reaction out of Blondie and her brother is just what I need.<p>

"You know, in the past they called a whore a painted lady, because they were the only people who bothered to wear makeup. Seems like the same's true now," I say, sauntering over to the District One station.

"I'm nobody's whore, District Seven," de Montfort snaps, looking up from her station. You can almost see her facial expression change when she realises that it's me she's talking to, which makes me grin to myself. I feel better already.

"Well someone's defensive." I sing-song it, because I know that will annoy her the most. Blondie and I have developed antagonising each other almost to an art form.

She glares at me. "How do you expect me to react when you say such things?"

"Well that depends if they're true or not, doesn't it?"

"You don't know what's true and what isn't. You don't know the first thing about me."

"I know enough." And I do. Just because Snow forces her into doing it doesn't mean I can't hold it against her or bring it up; it's even better that way, I think viciously. Hurts her more. And right now all I need it to see someone else in pain.

"Really? So what do you know, Johanna Mason?" de Montfort replies. She's trying to mock me, but really right now any attempted mockery goes right over my head.

"You heard me."

"No, I don't think I did," hisses Blondie instantly.

"So, how much did your escort pay for you? Must be quite a lot if he's a repeat customer." It's not like what's between Cashmere de Montfort and the District One escort is a well-kept secret. Everyone in here knows; it just suits them to pretend like that particular little secret's private. Well too bad.

Blondie grips the desk so hard her knuckles turn white. "You know nothing about him."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes. Why don't you try and be sensible for once, Mason? Why don't you try thinking before you speak."

I ignore the last instruction to focus on the opening that will cause her more pain. "Oh yeah, sensible like thinking every darkened room is really out to get you. No, wait, you do think that." Another low blow maybe, but the woman's pathetic. Her Games were almost a decade ago; she should be over them already.

"But at least I have someone to convince me it isn't," de Montfort says in return, venomously.

I wince involuntarily. That's the one issue with winding Blondie up – every so often she fights back. And when she does she can hold her own as much as I can. Usually I can shrug her off, but she chose exactly the wrong time to give me a response like that.

So I snap back, instantly on the defensive. "Better alone than surrounded by people like you."

She laughs. "Suit yourself. I know whose position I'd rather be in."

I give her my best look of derision and turn away.

"Why are you even here, Mason?" de Montfort junior calls out. "Your tributes are dead." I look back, notice that his sister's gripping his wrist to stop him from doing anything, and almost smile.

"Because I wanted the pleasure of your company, of course."

"You know what I think?" He smirks. "I think you're thinking about how the boy you mentored died at the bloodbath. I think you're angry and you're taking it out on us."

Sometimes I forget how good Gloss de Montfort can be at reading people. Dammit.

"How do you know about that anyway?"

"Falco," Blondie says smugly. "Who was he, anyway? Your boyfriend? Isn't he a bit young for you, District Seven?"

"And isn't your boy-toy a bit too old for you, Blondie?" I return. "And he was my cousin, Capitol Clone."

"Oh, sorry." She doesn't sound sorry at all. "My mistake. And I doubt even you will need help to find the contradiction in your first sentence."

I glare at her, racking my brains for anything else I can use against the siblings. After a few seconds too long I remember something Blue mentioned in passing before the Games-proper started.

"And you know what I think, de Montfort Junior? I think you're annoyed that tribute girl you were in lust with just died, and you're stuck watching the one that's more to Johan Taly's taste than yours. How old was she anyway? Fourteen? You're practically a cradle robber."

Gloss stands suddenly, fists clenched. His chair skids back from the speed of it, and at the sound of it grating across the linoleum floor turns all eyes to us in the hope that they'll see something interesting.

"She was eighteen," he grates, "and I was _not_ just in lust with her." He's _really_ close to losing it, you can see that. Shaking and everything; teeth grating together, nails looking like they're almost drawing blood on his palm.

"Oh yeah, so it was love instead?" I roll my eyes. "Snow, Gloss, grow up. You can't fall in love after less than a week."

And before anyone can point out that I'm being a hypocrite (though I never had any illusions about what Rowan was; first crush, first kiss, but certainly not love; and if it hadn't been the Games that relationship would have lasted about as long as any of the ones I've had since then have) I spin on my heel and leave the room. The conversation has achieved exactly what it is I wanted it to accomplish; I feel slightly better now for leaving behind a trail of anger. Best to quit while you're ahead, after all.

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><p>Everyone in Panem knows how the Seventy Fourth Hunger Games end; like Finnick's Games (and mine, I suppose, though I'm pretty biased) it's one of those which'll go down in Hunger Games history. Maybe even in Panemese history, if our honoured president reacts to the results the way I think he will. Because of course, there's absolutely no way that threatening to commit double suicide could be considered an act of rebellion. Nope. Not at all.<p>

But I say all very well and good for rebelling. No, my issue with these Games is much more personal. Aside from the obvious only surviving family is dead and now I'm utterly alone situation, there are the pretty obvious parallels between my Games and these ones.

Uncharacteristic amounts of Gamemaker interference? Check. A love story (well, like story) between two tributes? Check. Them both being allowed to live? Well, I'd think it would be kind of obvious, wouldn't it? You know, Rowan still being alive would be kind of a big clue, and all?

(He's not.)

So once that's taken into account it doesn't really take District Three intelligence to figure out why I decide I hate Katniss Everdeen the second I see the results of the Games. She did what I never could (and she likes Peeta even less than I liked Rowan; that much is obvious to anyone who isn't a Capitol moron who looks at life through red-tinted glasses), she won the Games Vince should have, and she managed to get in a 'screw you' to Snow in the bargain. Some people have all the luck.

And some of us have bad karma surrounding us like lichen on a tree. Whoever said life was fair was a Snow-endorsed liar.

Worse than trying not to be jealous of Everdeen – _she_ still has a little sister back home; _she _gets to break all the unwritten rules I couldn't – is not being able to do anything about that drive for revenge I've had in the back of me head overpowering any other thoughts ever since the first day of the Games.

I've been delivering messages for Bastin for ages, sure, and I know he has a room Volts set up where he can disable the security systems for a limited amount of time so he can talk properly with the people he's coordinating. But I can't say anything to him about joining the Rebellion-proper, not till we get back to District Seven. People say I act rashly, and maybe I do, but I'm not stupid.

If I tell him to disable the security systems then it'll be pretty obvious I'm doing so, and I might not know much about technology but I don't want to take the risk that people find a way to see what we were doing after all, or even just guess. No point getting revenge against the Capitol if they notice and stop you before you've done anything, right?

Only I thought I was done with acting when I dropped that mask five years ago, so the wait till we get home and I can finally _do_ something, anything, is awful. If it helped me to get over losing Vince I wouldn't mind so much, but as it is it doesn't. Just another set of emotions to add to the pile.

So instead I spend the rest of the Games – and the Firekids' interviews, because the trains all leave to their Districts at the same time – moping around the place and taking my anger out on anything that moves. When they're screening the Seventy Fourth Games Recap I'm down in the Victors' gym, working the equipment as hard as I possibly can.

The gym is technically for all of us but was taken over by District Two a long, long time ago – it's virtually unheard of for anyone else to use it, and they have a reputation of scaring away anyone who tries. It says a lot about what kind of mood I'm projecting to the rest of the world that I don't get much more than a raised eyebrow and a cross to the other side of the room from anyone in there.

Not that I complain, of course. The solitude suits me just fine.

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><p>When I get back to District Seven I get to face an empty house with reminders of Vince scattered everywhere, and I can't do that. Not quite yet. Eventually I'll have to clean the place up, dump his stuff in one room or somewhere else entirely. Maybe even be a charitable member of the community and give his things to someone who needs it. Yeah right – that'd be acting like I'm a nice person.<p>

Eventually I'll move back in to my place – still a weird thought, that, five years after the Centre or no – and get on with my life, but for the moment I can't handle the reminders that Vince is gone and I'm not, that I'm now completely alone. It should have been the other way round; my cousin might have been far more fragile than his happy go lucky persona might have liked to pretend, but he was still more stable than I am. He'd be able to cope better than I can.

But I'm Johanna Mason, and if nothing else she at least never gives up. I'll go back and keep on with my life, just like after every other time I've watched the tributes I was responsible die. It'll just take a little bit longer than usual.

For the moment though I camp out at Willow's house. My old mentor might be annoying with her attempts at kindness at sympathy, but at least I know she won't mind having a lodger for a few days. And she'll leave me alone, unlike Blue, and her house doesn't reek of vomit and cheap wine, like Blight's does. Staying at Bastin's is too weird a thought to even bear thinking about.

A day after we get back from the Capitol I'm up with the sun, as is usual. Always been a morning person and all that. There's no point talking to Bastin for at least another few hours, as much as I want to, so I take a walk around the District instead.

There aren't much people around at this time of the morning. One of the few is my old bunkmate Minty, which is very odd – she used to sleep till noon whenever she was given the chance. I haven't talked too her much since the Games – after Rowan died I learned not to get close to anyone ever again, and Minty was too dangerously close to a friend for me to do anything but alienate her.

Even so, she stops and says hello and sorry about Vince, which is nice of her I suppose. At least she sounds properly sorry and not just faking it. Then again, I really shouldn't be that surprised – the whole District has always liked Vince a lot more than me. Can't say I blame them. There've been times where I've liked my cousin a lot more than me too.

Once the – awkward – conversation with Minty is over, I kill time, itching with impatience until I can go and talk to Bastin. Once the sun's high enough in the sky to ensure that he's awake I knock on his door.

"What do you want, Johanna?"

"To talk to you." I put the emphasis on 'talk', and he gets what I mean instantly, because he leads me through his house into the little room he makes sure to keep bug-free. I'm not quite sure I want to know how, really.

"Well, Johanna? We're quite safe."

I take a deep breath. No turning back once I say this.

"Bastin, I know you're up to something. Some rebellion against the Capitol. I want in."

I see him hesitating, and that can't happen. I'm going to do everything I can to bring down the Capitol, and I'm not going to let any doubts about my mental health stop that.

"Do you hear me? I. Want. In."

Slowly, Bastin nods.


	3. Chapter 2

**So yeah. Thanks for reviewing; I hope you like the continuation of the fic.**

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><p>The funeral is later that day. Vince and Teagan are buried at the same time and in adjacent graves, just as is traditional for Hunger Games victims. The mentors are always there, but never where I am now – as a family member, not the object of blame for the grieving families. Not that being among the most affected saves me from Teagan's family's accusing look, of course. That would be far too selfless.<p>

It's held, as usual, on the outskirts of the Forest of the Dead. The caskets – the same ones they were sent back home in – are lowered into the earth, then the surviving family take turns to toss the earth back in and plant a tree over the dead. Every death in the District has been treated in the same way – that's why it's called the Forest of the Dead. It's a literal forest grown on the graves of the dead. Life out of death. It's supposed to be symbolic.

I've always liked the place. It's the one part of District Seven where the trees aren't constantly being attacked by chainsaws; not even the Capitol tries to chop down this part of the forest. Targeting the Forest of the Dead would do much quicker work than a Games and a handful of berries.

Of course, I have been a more regular visitor than most. Being the last person alive in your family tends to do that, you know.

So I plant the sapling over Vince's dead body by myself, and try not to think about how this means there won't be anyone to do this for me when I die. Try not to think about how Vince left me, just like everyone else. How I'm finally alone – and how it might even by my fault.

But that's what Snow wants me to think. I shovel dirt in faster. He wants to manipulate me into thinking it's my own fault. But it's not. All I did was say no; Snow's the one who killed my cousin for it. And if he can pretend it's unrelated, I can too. But the Capitol is who killed Vince – and if I have anything to do with it, they won't be around much longer.

Once Vince's tree is planted I take the time to look around properly, and am almost blown away by just how many people there are. There are always lots of people at a Games funeral, always those who turn up on principle to do the only thing they can to show the Capitol what the Games are doing. But I swear over half the District is here, and in all my five years mentoring it's the largest Games funeral I've seen by far.

Looks like I was right when I told Snow how many people knew Vince, or maybe it's those berries doing their work. Or maybe even Teagan, though I doubt it. Either way, though, it means there are a lot of upset people in District Seven. Good, then. It makes my life easier.

I hang around for maybe half an hour, watching people pay respects and searching the crowd for someone in particular. My eyes stay dry, though, my throat free of lumps. I've spent all my tears for Vince, and while the grief is still there it's just another bit to add to the nice pile I've picked up in these twenty years. It's still there, fresher than the rest – fuel for the anger, though. Better that way, I think. More productive.

People probably think I'm heartless, looking at me. I don't care. Let them think what they want; I stopped caring about that a long time ago. There's a saying that it's better to be feared than loved. It's true, too – you can do more a lot with awe and respect than with genuine like. Vince disagreed, I know. And look where that got him.

Then again, people are turning up to his funeral in droves. If it was me they'd probably be camped out with banners and smiles, but now they have Reaping clothes and tears. It's not like they can change anything.

Once the crowd begins to thin out I find who I'm looking for. It's been years since I've spoken to him, and we didn't exactly part on the best of terms. Can't say I blame him – can't say I blame myself, either. He's been avoiding me due to resentment and anger; I've been avoiding him because he reminds me of things I'd rather not think of.

But I need to help organise a rebellion, and Aaron Quincy is the perfect recruit.

So I slip in to walk beside him as he makes his way solo out of the Forest of the Dead. He used to look just like a younger version of Rowan, but then puberty hit, and now the memory in my head and the now-eighteen-year-old-and-older younger brother barely look related. Aaron has his brother's light brown hair and eyes, but where Rowan's skin was about average District Seven olive, Aaron's is a lot paler, like someone who hasn't spent a lot of time outside.

Then again, he hasn't really, not since his brother died.

Aaron's shorter than normal for round here, too, and wider. Not fat, not even if his family makes enough money off the paper mill to never go hungry. Just built somewhat stockier than you'd think considering what his brother looked like.

For someone routinely called a moron by Rowan, Aaron's pretty smart, and ever since I got back from my Games he's been devoting all his time to tinkering around in the mill. I never knew who he was before the Games, but judging by what Rowan had said about him, it's a change. And I do know he's angry, very angry at the Capitol. At me too, judging by the conversations we've had.

Not to mention his family runs a loud, noisy paper mill where it'd be very easy to talk without fear of being overheard. See what I mean about being the perfect recruit?

Aaron notices me next to him almost immediately, his face clouding over as soon as he sees who it is.

"What do you want, Mason?" His voice is almost resigned, like he doesn't have the energy to deal with me right now.

"To talk. Why, is that so unusual?"

"Yes, it is. Now cut the crap and just tell me what you're here about."

"I was wondering what you were doing at my cousin's funeral, actually." I need to figure out a way to keep him talking until we get to the paper mill. There are some things you just don't say in public, and it would look odd if I just go and visit the family of my dead District partner.

"What does it look like I was doing?" he snaps.

I roll my eyes. "You know what I mean, Quincy-junior. Did you finally crawl out of your hole and socialise with someone other than your machinery for once?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I happened to like Vincent. Quite a lot more than you, actually, Mason."

"Well go and join the queue, then. You think there's anyone in the District who thinks otherwise?"

Something in the way I say it must really piss him off, because he quickens his stride and walks faster. I'm taller than him, though, so it's not hard to keep up.

"You know, you really should have died instead of him."

It's calculated to hurt, but I'm far past caring about anything anyone else says. So I just shrug.

"I know."

"And you don't even care!" he explodes. "That's two different people I wish had lived instead of you, Mason, that's quite a record."

"And here I thought you and Rowan had always hated each other," I say, ignoring the last part.

"You don't really know how much you care about something until it's gone," Aaron says, angrily. "Sure, Rowan and I never got along that well, but he was still my brother, and I'd give anything to have him back. Instead, I get saddled with the most obnoxious person in the District, and she won't leave me alone."

He stares at me pointedly. I get the hint, thank you very much; I'm just choosing to ignore it.

"Look, I know you're still angry about your brother. But why be angry at me? It's not like I killed him."

"You're here, aren't you?"

That gets a laugh out of me, a harsh, unfunny laugh, because it's so true. I recognise the reasoning, because it's been the same reasoning I've used so many times in the past.

"I'm like you now, Aaron." It's the first time I've used his full name all conversation, and that gets his attention. It should too; I don't use first names, not when there are last names and nicknames that can add so much more venom to a speech.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You lost Rowan to the Games, I lost Vince. We're at least even now."

"Yeah? So show me how I killed Vincent."

"So show me how I killed Rowan," I reply, knowing exactly what he means. We're only a few minutes away from the paper mill; I just have a bit more time to kill before I can bring up the real reason for this conversation.

"You won the Games he lost, didn't you?"

"Sure, but that isn't killing him." Yes, I know what a hypocrite I'm being. That is not the point.

"Oh yeah," Aaron says sarcastically. "Because you totally wouldn't have killed him if it had been down to you two."

He's got me there. "You think I would've liked it?"

"You still would've. I count that as killing him."

"You think they'd let two people win the Games?"

Aaron laughs mirthlessly. "They just did, remember?"

We reach the back entrance to the mill; Aaron ducks into it and I follow him.

"What are you still doing here, Mason?" he asks, once he realises I'm not going on my way.

"We're in the middle of a conversation. Didn't your mother always tell you it's rude to finish a conversation halfway?" Not that that's ever stopped me in the past, but that's not the point.

We already have to yell to make ourselves heard over the machinery – there are no holidays for the mill – but I step closer towards one of the noisier machines anyway.

"What are you doing, Mason? That's dangerous, that is."

"I need to talk to you. Properly. Somewhere we won't get overheard."

"Yeah? Go ahead."

"You're annoyed at the Capitol too, right?" I can barely hear myself; hopefully Aaron will, but barely.

"Well, yeah. Why?"

"There's a bunch of us. Victors and others, from all over Panem, not just District Seven. We've decided we've had enough with the way we're being treated."

Aaron's face clears. "Oh. A rebellion. So you're asking if I'm in?"

I nod.

He grins, the first real smile I think I've ever seen from him. "Oh yeah, I'm in. Definitely. Wouldn't miss it for the world."

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><p>"Mission successful," I report smugly two days later, sprawled out on a chair in Bastin's office. The four of us are there – all the living District Seven Victors but Blight, who's too drunk to be anything but a liability. Bastin's managed to shut the surveillance system off for an hour, too. Weird as the guy is, seems Volts is a handy friend to have.<p>

The way Bastin's organised it it's us four who are the core of the District Seven branch of the Rebellion; we each go out and recruit others to the cause, who in turn recruit others and pass on messages and the like. This way even if the Capitol figures out that someone's involved they're not going to be able to dob everyone in, because they won't know who else is involved.

Bastin's in communication with people in other Districts, though I don't quite know how and from what I've heard it's not a very good connection. So until the next Hunger Games we're pretty much on our own, but he figures that if we manage to somehow synchronise uprisings through Panem we'll have a bigger chance of success.

Even if I'm in the core group of Victors, I don't get to do any planning – I keep my role as the messenger, only now I get to go out and actively recruit as well. Stir up public opinion against Snow and all that, which shouldn't be too hard to do. Hard as it is to admit, the Seventy Fourth Games have been good for something.

It's Willow, Bastin and a few other non-Victors who are really in charge round here. Though of course, Bastin keeps saying that for the Rebellion to succeed it has to be organised but more importantly unanimous – people won't turn out in force unless they agree with what's going on, and at the moment they won't.

Sure, people are angry. But they're always angry this time of year, even when we win. We'll have to wait and see if this year turns into anything, or wait until next year. It'll be a Quarter Quell, and I bet that between the current mood and the extra cruelty of a Quell we'll have enough support in the District to do something.

It'll be a wait, Bastin warned me this morning. But at least this way I still get the feeling of at least doing something.

"Yeah?" Blue raises an eyebrow. "Go on, what was your mission?"

"I managed to get us a new recruit. Well, three I reckon, only Aaron hasn't gotten back to me about his folks."

"Aaron?" Willow asks. "You mean Aaron Quincy?"

"It's not like the name's common or anything."

"Can it, Mason," Blue snaps. "Seriously – can you go two minutes before trying to piss anyone off?"

"Nope," I say, grinning, because he's right, and this'll piss him off the most.

Bastin interrupts, probably sensing that the two of us are about to argue instead of using the valuable no surveillance time for something a bit more productive.

"Was there anything you wanted to add, Johanna?"

"We've got another communication point as well," I say.

"Yes, I thought that would be it. Well done; we'll make good use of it in the future. Does anyone else have anything to report?"

"Aaron Quincy…" Willow seems to be in shock. "How did you get them on your side? They've been avoiding you ever since you won the Games that Rowan lost."

"Aaron hates me, but he hates the Capitol more," I point out. "And it's not like I'm not used to people hating me or anything."

"Johanna…"

"Snow, Willow, how are you helping a rebellion? You trust in people too much to be a decent rebel."

"I like people too much to be anything but in good conscience," Willow says sharply. "Anyway, Bastin, it seems that District Twelve's trick with the berries has been doing exactly what we thought."

"Early days yet," Bastin cautions. "It could wear down soon; be wary about who you approach. And those who you do tell them just to pass the message on but to try not to show anymore discontent than usual. We don't want to alert Snow to what's going on and get shut down before we even start."

"Again," Blue says, earning a hard look from Bastin.

"How again?" I ask, because this is news.

"Capitol business," Bastin tells me. "It happened just before the Games before yours. It's not common knowledge. Even I'm not technically supposed to know, so I have no clue how Blue does."

He shrugs. "You'd be surprised at how much you can pick up if you screw the right people."

"And here I was thinking that was Finnick's shtick," I quip.

You joke about it, once the horror's faded. Blue isn't doing it by choice. Neither's Finnick. But you pretend like they are, like they're just guys being guys using their celebrity status. You joke about it because, even if you were smart or lucky or just plain alone enough to get out of it, it's the only way to cope.

And that's just another reason I'm doing what I'm doing now. Because it so easily could have been me.


	4. Chapter 3

**Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing; compliments are always good. As is concrit :)  
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**This chapter deals with a couple of my Panem pet peeves - the idea that none of the Districts have any technology to help them in their industry. Which is INCREDIBLY stupid; Panem's been shown repeatedly to be higher tech than us in several respects, so why would people in D7, say, be using axes to chop down trees? The worst culprit is D4, of course. They'd be fish and seafood farming in part and using modern fishing methods in others. Not tridents. It makes no sense whatsoever. (Which is why I had Mo point out the absurdity of Finnick knowing how to use one in 'He Who Fights Monsters'- maybe he'd be trained in using it as a weapon, but not as a fishing instrument.)**

**Oh, and what Katniss calls hovercraft are actually zeppelins/blimps by our terms. It's the only way of acheiving flight that explains how easily they were taken down in Mockingjay.**

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><p>The months after Vince's death somehow manage to pass relatively quickly. I spend most of my time outside of Victor's Village, passing on messages, recruiting Rebellion members and generally stirring up unrest. It's a harder task than it looks. It's the rare person in Seven who's actually content with their lot, but while many are angry at the Capitol not many have to guts to do something about it.<p>

Not many have the guts to talk to me face to face, either. At least I know my intimidation factor's still working.

Still, enough people are angry, and showing it. We're a large enough District that maybe, just maybe, if an uprising happens, we'll have just enough forces to take the Peacekeepers by surprise and win. Willow keeps saying that maybe we'll even get some of them to join us, but I doubt it. They're been given a pretty sweet spot by the Capitol; why should they want to change that?

According to the others, though, a lot more people are willing to rebel now that they've seen what Katniss Everdeen did. She practically held the Capitol hostage and won.

They're going to start threatening her family any day now.

Still, apparently that true love snowspeech with the berries won over the Capitol, and the Districts too. Just in a different way; people back here have seen someone rebel – and someone from Twelve, who have frankly been a bit of a laughingstock up till now – and decided that if she can pull it off, they can too. Helps the cause a lot, Bastin says. Makes her a target instead of us, too, which is always good.

That doesn't mean I wish Vince had won instead of her. I do, every single Snow-endorsed day. I've hated the Firekids every moment since I saw them win, and no amount of rebellion-helping is going to help that. I mean, what's so special about Katniss freaking Everdeen?

So I spend my days trying to further the Rebellion. Aaron's the person I visit most often, though I'm not the only person who uses the paper mill as a handy spot to transfer information. It's a decent cover – he's only two and a half years younger than me and the brother of my old District Partner. Everyone knows we used to hate each other, but they also know we have a lot more in common. Probably think more's going on than really is, knowing people.

The six months between Vince's Games and the Firekids' Victory Tour aren't exactly fun, but I get through them. At least I have something to work towards.

And then the Girl on Fire and Lover Boy visit District Seven and become an even greater focus of the entire nation.

And that's about the time everything goes to hell.

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><p>"I've learned several very interesting facts," Bastin tells the half dozen of us gathered in his office; us three other useful Victors and a few of the more important figures who know what's going on. And, inexplicably, Aaron Quincy.<p>

"Yeah?" This is Blue, just for the record. Not me. Surprisingly enough.

"Well… how do I put this? Apparently the Girl who was on Fire has managed to provoke a response from District Eleven."

"So, everyone loves the Snow-endorsed Firegirl. What's new?" I snap.

Bastin ignores me. "They cut the broadcast the second she broke script, of course. But they were still filming, and apparently there's ways to get to the saved coverage if you know how. Don't ask me on the technicalities. Our sources-"

"-In other words, Nuts and Volts-" Blue cuts in.

"And the Pyro," I add, referring to Johan Taly, who won his Games sixteen years ago by basically blowing up all the other tributes.

"In other words, our sources," Bastin says icily. "This might not be one hundred percent secure. We don't want to give away anyone else if we get caught."

"You morons," Aaron adds flatly.

We all look at him. "What are you even doing here, kid?" asks one of the others. He's a big, hulking forest worker with some respect from the others – I recognise the face from my time working in the woods with the rest of the Community Centre kids but can't place a name.

"To bring news," he says with remarkable coolness for the youngest – and only uninvited – person here. "Talking of District Three, I'm pretty sure something's happened there. Something big."

We probably all share the same expression of bemusement. Willow speaks first, though, and probably for the best really.

"Why would you think that, Aaron?"

So he explains. In addition to the routine preventative maintenance, sometimes parts of the mill break down, and spare parts need to be gotten. Some of these parts are mechanical, but some are electrical – which means they need to get them from District Three. And it's not like paper mills are common, which means that any specialised parts need to be specially ordered and manufactured. So to avoid delays in manufacturing, whenever a part is replaced another spare is ordered.

That's what Aaron was doing today. One specialised electric part – he spares us the technicalities – needed replacement, so they changed it and sent Aaron down to the Mayor's office to request that an order for another part be made. It was ordered, but Aaron got warned that there'd likely be a larger wait for its arrival than usual.

"Because of a slowdown in production," Aaron says triumphantly. "Only I thought that was odd, see, because there are never slowdowns in production. So I decided to come straight here and tell you anyway, because I figured that if anything's odd in Panem you should be the one to know."

It's kind of obvious he's talking to Bastin by now, really. The rest of us are just curious observers.

"And then listening to what you said now it's pretty obvious they've just had some sort of uprising. It's not rocket science – if they have people who saw what happened in Eleven – I still want to know what that was, by the way – then they'd show it to everyone else, which'd prompt people to rise up. Explains the halt in production, too. There's no other explanation. It's not like Three's the type of industry to be affected by weather like some of us others are."

"And even then it's not like they care," the same forest worker says. You can hear the bitterness in his voice. "It takes nothing short of the end of the world to get 'em to stop working us. And even then they make us go hungry every day we don't work."

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead and air your grievances. It's not like none of us have heard it before," I snap.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Johanna has a point," Blue says. "We're talking about the hows and the whats, not the whys."

"_Anyway_," Willow adds hurriedly, seeing yet another argument about to break out. "Bastin? Continue."

"As I was saying, there was something resembling an uprising an uprising in District Eleven once Katniss Everdeen stirred them up a little, but peacekeepers quickly stepped in the intervene. We've just learned from young Mr Quincy that something's going on in District Three. All in all, it seems as if all of Panem is in revolution."

"Good time to act then," comments Blue.

"That's what I was thinking," Nyssa Fourelms, one of Seven's major gossip mongers, adds. "Lucie Stenson's girl – the one who works in the clothes depo – mentioned that they're not getting anything else to replace what they're selling. Maybe there's something going on in Eight as well?"

"There could be," Bastin acknowledges, and Aaron adds, "Probably is, if my logic's right."

"So what?" I ask. "We start an uprising, get hammered? Shouldn't we better wait till Firegirl does something else nauseatingly cute, like try on wedding dresses? I'm sure that will stir up the masses."

Yes, I know there's contempt in my voice. No, I'm not going to stop it. Yes, I do dislike the Girl Who All Of Panem Loves that much.

"Stop it, Johanna," Willow says. "I know you don't like her, but Katniss Everdeen's done a lot of good for our cause."

She also killed my cousin, I think, but don't say it. No point, not when they'd just tell me that it was Snow instead. And sure, I know it was the Capitol's Games, but she's the one who won them. Won them instead of Vince.

"I think we should get something done soon," Blue pitches in. "Act while the Capitol's forces are spread thin and all that."

Most of the others agree with the decision. And so it's decided – we stir up every single person in the District who can help, and act soon. Hopefully it will be enough.

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><p>In the few weeks after the Firekids' Victory tour and sappy staged proposal we get to work trying to fan the sparks of rebellion into a flame. Because sure, maybe the oh-so-brilliant Girl on Fire started people thinking that they could do something against the Capitol, but if just thinking it were enough Snow or his predecessors would've been overthrown seventy four years ago. At least.<p>

I spend my days wandering District Seven on various pretences and reminding people exactly what it is about the Capitol they hate. Subtly, mostly, believe it or not, because call us paranoid but for all we know there are cameras everywhere. And I'd kind of like to actually be alive to fight the Capitol, thanks. Nothing to lose now, but it'd still be nice to die at least having done _something_.

We'd already had a relatively large frame of quiet support in the District; now we build on that and get people ready to mobilise. Existing rebels pull friends and family in. Food is stockpiled; weapons, too, filched from wherever they can be found. Broken axes hidden to be put back together later instead on thrown away by the people who use them to clear branches off trees before the chainsaw can come in. Knives distributed by the butcher. Explosives and other relatively high-tech supplies made secretly by Aaron and his small gang of technically-minded accomplices.

Meetings between people get more frequent, too, and the paper mill becomes more crowded than it has in years. The Quincys start pretending to be looking for staff to cover up their real activities and to recruit more people, but even this story still has gaps in it. So we act within a fortnight of that meeting at Bastin's before the Capitol starts getting too suspicious and lifts more Peacekeepers in.

The decision is sudden; Bastin doesn't want any news getting out ahead of time if any of us can help it. Just a realisation that we're probably as ready as can be, and that if we put it off any longer someone high up will realise something's up.

Within twelve hours of the decision to go ahead the entire District knows. A few people – Aaron Quincy and the three most trusted of his improvised explosives group – are told straightaway, because they need a while to set up the prearranged signal. We needed something that could reach all of Seven quickly, and we're quite a big District really. What better than a really big explosion?

There's quite a big river running through District Seven, mostly in the forested parts. It's made up of smaller tributaries, fed in the spring by meltwater from the mountains surrounding Seven, which meet up just a bit ahead of the Lower Dam, which alternates between a barren wasteland and a log-filled lake of various depths. Parts of the forest are quite remote, and there are few roads running through them.

It's much easier to transport logs by water, which is where the dams come in. The forest workers use a combination of flat railway cars and off-road vehicles as well as the occasional hovercraft – but not many, because the big balloons that let them fly mean they can't get past the trees - to shift water-treated logs into the rivers, where a system of dams propels large batches of logs down to the entrance of the processing plant. This works just fine, as long as the opening of dams is carefully controlled.

Which, of course, is where Aaron and his crew come in. At midday the explosives they placed and connected to some sort of homemade timer go off, breaking the Lower Dam – the one which has the most pressure behind it. You can hear the boom all through the District and a wave of water gushes down towards the processing plant – where people in the know get out and jam the system that usually gets water out of the way safely. That's what the plan says will happen, anyway; I'm not in that part of the District at the time.

The explosion takes me by surprise, because I, unlike the bombers, wasn't told about the timing in advance. Still, my time in the Arena has honed already-sharp reflexes to faster, and minutes after the signal I'm in the streets with who knows how many other people, axes in hand. Everyone around me has some kind of weapon, from kitchen knives to solid planks of wood to various lethal-looking bits of machinery scavenged from their jobs to proper weapons like me. I spot someone with a gun in their hand and realise that it's a Peacekeeper who's decided to act with us and not against us.

For the first minutes there isn't any fighting, just a steadily growing stream of armed and angry people. I take the time to think of what should be going on. In the forests, workers with chainsaws will turn on their overseers and fight their way down towards the District proper, hopefully picking up comrades in people not in on it. The forest workers who don't cut trees should have other methods at their disposal, like very heavy off-road vehicles.

At the school, the younger children would be all located in one spot, while the older kids and teachers barricade a safe area around them and stand defending that area. Some adults who work near there should be coming to defend them, weapons in tow. In other parts of the District people will be heading straight home, making for stockpiles of weaponry to arm themselves. Then everyone will eventually converge upon the same spot near the centre of the District – the collection of buildings where the Capitol places the most control.

As our stream of people heads towards the centre things get more and more chaotic. Other people are everywhere around me, pushing, shoving, all frantic to get to some enemy we can fight. The Peacekeepers would have realised that something's up the second they heard that explosion, and about ten minutes later a car full of them on their way to investigate bumps into my mob of people.

The results are brutal. They have guns on them, of course, and just start firing into the crowd. A few people are hit, collapse to the ground. A voice, wild with grief and pain and anger, yells out a name.

The mob keeps going, and if that voice wanted to stay with the dead it wouldn't have been able to, the power of the crowd is so strong. Not all of the hit are dead, but most of those that didn't die on impact die of being trampled by the sea of people out for blood. One man lies there, covered in blood and moaning, as I step over him. That's the price you pay for freedom.

But even though the Peacekeepers have guns there are only five of them and at least a few hundred of us, and despite their continual firing into the crowd eventually we catch up to them. Four are quick enough to get back into the car and back away the way they came, undoubtedly to call for backup. But one, slower than the others is caught in the mob.

Never underestimate the power of angry people in crowds. I've seen a lot of awful things during my life, but the death of that Peacekeeper comes close to beating them all. He's just hammered into again and again by the mob, and because they're untrained people with poor weapons it seems to take him an age to die. He's passed down through the group so that more and more people can contribute to killing him; the available scapegoat towards the thing that everyone is so, so angry about.

Finally, once the man is bloodied and beaten and bruised so far he's almost unrecognisable, his defected comrade takes pity on him and shoots him in the head. After, of course, waiting for a few seconds to let it think in just who is doing this, just who has sided with us, the 'enemy'.

There are laughs and cheers and hoots all round. Even after death the body is mutilated and picked over. His gun, taken off his hands when he was caught, is passed around and admired until it reaches someone who doesn't have a weapon.

The march goes on. Groups of Peacekeepers are encountered more frequently, now, and though we take heavy casualties there are also repeats of the first death. More and more people join the stream, some bearing tales of what's been going on in other parts of Seven.

Some of the dead are killed by their own side; the mob's too wild, too unpredictable, almost frenzied in their lust for blood. In our lust for blood, I should say, because the mob takes over after a while. I stop being Johanna, Hunger Games Victor, and start being just another part of a flesh and blood machine out for well-earned revenge. Anyone who can't keep up just gets trampled underfoot by everyone coming behind them.

More and more people die as more Peacekeepers assemble. The closer we get to the Centre, the more of them there are, and the clearer it is that we need to take over the District, fast.

And so the battle goes on for hours; an almost savage mob against far superior but also far outnumbered Peacekeeper forces. We get reinforcements as workers get down from the closest part of the forests, but it soon becomes clear that while the chainsaws were useful up in the more open forestland, they're a recipe for deadly disaster in the District-proper.

Time passes. Both sides tire out and numbers grow thinner – maybe, just maybe, we can do this. The mob seems to sense this. There's a sudden burst of energy, and everyone surges forward.

And that's when the hovercraft arrive.


	5. Chapter 4

**So here I am with another update. Are people still reading? It'd be nice to get confirmation of that fact, if it is one…**

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><p>They're not hovering straight over the mob, that's the oddest part. Instead the three of them all congregate over another part of the District – it's hard to tell which from here. No one knows what they're doing, and I can already sense it scaring people, spooking the mob. The fighting still goes on, but it seems a bit more half-hearted now.<p>

And then the hovercraft blast their speakers, and we all learn exactly how the Capitol's got us trapped this time.

"Stand down or we bomb the school."

It's a short, simple command issued through the speakers on the hovercraft. It also has immediate effect. Slowly but surely the mob begins the break apart; first people stop, then they begin to try to force their way back through to the crowd, away from the fight. Soon what was once an angry mob turns into lone angry people desperately trying to fight the Peacekeepers.

I go with the flow of the crowd back to their homes and places of work, away from what was a battleground mere minutes ago. Times like this it's safety in numbers, and even though it seems as if every part of me is aching to go back and fight it's the bit that deals with self preservation that somehow wrests control from the bloodlust and sends me back to Victor's Village.

My choice is proved to be the right one when I look back at the few who stayed. Now that their numerical advantage has just been removed they're helpless. Like savages with their sticks and stones against the encroaching oppressor wielding guns and superior firepower.

It's a bloodbath. Those brave rebels are just mown down by the gunfire, like lambs to the slaughter. None of our weapons are any good unless the mob takes over, but now the children have been threatened there's no mob.

The Capitol knows just what buttons to press. You want to control someone, you threaten the children. That was their theory when they started the Games. It's still how they work now. More's the pity, they're completely right.

The kids of the entire District should be, if everything went to plan, concentrated in a handful of buildings in the school. Easy enough pickings for the Capitol's hovercrafts, because we didn't count having to defend against an assault from the air into the planning. We shouldn't have. So what were three fully-equipped military hovercraft doing just half a day's flight from District Seven?

I ponder this question as I walk back to Victor's Village. And then run, because once the Peacekeepers deal with the few stupid enough not to know when retreating is the best way to fight another day they turn on the rest of us instead, spurred on by the heavy losses we've inflicted on them and the reassuring safety net of the hovercraft above.

Slowly the streets empty of people as the hovercrafts' speakers blast further instructions at us.

"All citizens will return to their housing immediately without further delay. They will not leave this housing until further notice. If any citizen does not follow this command they will be shot on sight. The children will stay in the school until further notice."

The message is pretty clear – you act up, the Capitol is saying, and you won't be the only one dead. They've regained control, and done so very effectively. How did everything manage to go so wrong so quickly?

I jog faster. Victor's Village is on the edge of the centre District, supposedly to give us a nicer view but probably to separate us even further from the rest. It's not the shortest walk back, and even though I'm moving more quickly than I was in the mob on the way there it seems to take an age.

Overhead, the speakers keep repeating their message at every opportunity. We must not be moving fast enough for them, though, because soon they start adding a time limit. In the distance I can still hear gunshots; Peacekeepers hitting those who weren't quite quick enough.

They don't want to kill a whole District. That'd be far too hard to hide, and the loss of anything even slightly wood-related would be too much for them to bear. But we're one of the larger Districts out there. They can keep shooting all they want; most people will be at home by now, snug and safe and absolutely terrified. There are enough of us to be expendable.

The gunshots get louder behind me. I quicken my pace, starting to hear my breath whistling in my ears, loud and harsh and desperate. There are only a couple of others out in the streets where I can see. No clue how many there are still lagging behind. This is the type of running I never had to do in the Arena, where I was always the one taking people by surprise. Maybe this is what it felt like for Abbie before she died – a foolproof plan gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Only a few streets now, I realise, and the gunshots are fading, slowing down. Maybe they've realised that enough is enough. Relief courses through me. It's not the dying part that worries me; I've faced death before, and won. And honestly, what do I even have to live for anymore? No, it's not the dying I'm scared of – it's the dying for nothing. Dying as just yet another member of a failed uprising that will undoubtedly bring even more pain onto the Districts.

If I'm going to die, it has to be worth it. If my death will make Snow feel every single bit of the pain he's caused me, then where can I sign up? But I don't want to die now, not like this.

Good thing I won't then. I'm almost there. Just a few more corners, and then I'm home.

And then I round a corner and almost run into two Peacekeepers.

The first bullet whizzes past my ear but misses me. By the time the second one looks up and fires I'm back around the corner, pressed against the brick of the wall, mind spinning furiously. This is the only route home that won't add more time than they're letting us have.

"I've still got three minutes, you know," I yell over the wall, dropping my axe at the same time. "And anyway, don't you know who I am?"

There are times when being a Victor has its perks, I must admit. This is one of them; I'm too well known all through Panem for them to be able to kill me like this. That's mean having to acknowledge there was some sort of rebellion through Seven, and that's the last thing I bet the Capitol wants to do.

"Come out and let us see, then," one of them yells back. "We won't shoot, we promise."

"You think I'm stupid?" I ask, loudly. "I won my Games by acting; I'm not that easily fooled."

And now they actually know who I am they're far less likely to actually fire. So I walk out, calmly, with my hands raised above my head.

"See? You don't want to be killing me by accident now, do you? Then methinks you'd be out of a job, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"

It seems to do the trick. If looks could kill I'd definitely be dead, but since they can't there isn't much to worry about. They insist on escorting me back home, of course. I'm probably safer this way though so I don't even bother trying to pretend to protest.

And that is how District Seven's attempted rebellion ends. An absolute success, isn't it just?

* * *

><p>Only, of course, that isn't even remotely the end of the story. The District's put into lockdown for a fortnight after the uprising, and while conditions aren't that bad for me, who has a large stockpile of food sitting in my pantry for just an occasion like this, others will doubtless be going hungry.<p>

During that time the Peacekeepers get reinforcements; they must be sending absolutely everyone they can throw at us. Maybe it'll thin their numbers in other places, I hope during some of my more optimistic moments. If they throw everyone they can find at Seven maybe it means that Eight or Three or one of the other rebelling Districts have less of them to deal with.

Though probably not. I bet they'll be taking them from One and Two, because neither would want to be anything but sympathetic to the master that treats them so well. They make me sick.

A week into the twenty-four hour curfew the children are released from the school and sent back home. A few days after that a list of the dead is posted through my front door while the speakers overhead announce that they've already all been cremated in a mass grave. They're not going to let us give any of the rebels the honour of a proper District Seven burial. The numbers are horrendous, but still quite a small proportion of Seven's full population. Doesn't make it any better.

I scan the list to see if there's anyone I know among the dead. Minty's there, and even though we stopped being close after I came back from the Games, I still feel a tiny pang of sadness. My old bunk buddy is dead. Yet another person the Capitol needs to be held accountable for.

There are a few other names that I know. Adric Stone, a small dark-haired member of Aaron's bomber squad. Mik Lodener, the old man who used to try to peddle junk for money. Ivy Groff, one of the closer of Vince's numerous friends. A couple of others whose names I vaguely recognise but can't put to faces. All dead.

Four days after we get the list the complete lockdown is lifted and people start going back to work. They're a lot tougher on us than they once were, though. A curfew's imposed every night and congregating in groups larger than four for more than five minutes is forbidden.

Slowly, us rebels try to piece together what happened. The school was a fatal flaw in our plan; if we'd let the children leave and the older ones fight the hovercraft would have had more difficulty finding a target. We didn't have quite the element of surprise we'd have hoped – somehow the Capitol had found out that something was going to happen, they just didn't know when. So, presumably, they'd moved those few hovercraft closer to the District so that our Peacekeepers would get reinforcements. And it worked.

The news isn't all bad though. Somehow Bastin manages to find out that there are groups of forest workers up in the far reaches of the forests that are unaccounted for; that the Capitol added to the list of the dead. But they're not dead, that's the key. They're just missing, and Bastin think they're a group of rebels biding their time. Not all hope is lost, he says. We'll just have to bide our time a little more.

The new congregation rule makes it harder to organise our little pocket of resistance, but not impossible. Because there's no way we're giving up, not when we got so close, not when conditions are so much worse now than they used to be. The Capitol is still going down, no matter what we have to give up to make it happen.

So for us five Victors, things are pretty much business as usual. We're not as affected by the new restrictions as others are; the only difference really is that I find myself doing a lot more message running than I used to because of the congregation rule, and making sure not to miss the curfew.

Most of my time is spent wandering the District, just as it was before the failed uprising. So that's where I am a week and a half after lockdown gets lifted – wandering the streets, just on my way back from delivering a message to Mrs Woodshall at the Community Centre. Walking the streets in Seven isn't very fun nowadays; too many signs of the failed rebellion.

That's when I hear the explosion.

I stop dead and look around, trying to figure out where it's from. The industrial part of the District centre, that's obvious enough, so I start heading towards there. Not quite sure why – maybe some part of me loves being stupidly heroic.

When the other explosion follows thirty second later I start running, because a jet of smoke accompanies this one, and stays there. There must be fire as well, then.

But that's not why I break into a run. No; that's because the smoke and the fire and the explosion are all coming from the distinctive stacks of the paper mill.

* * *

><p>Three blocks away from the mill the streets start filling with thick, chocking, poisonous-smelling smoke, and I have to half my run to pull off my jumper and use it to cover my nose and mouth. My arms are chill from the cold of early spring, but I figure it's better to freeze than choke to death. Anyway, heading towards the fire means that I'm not likely to be cold for much longer.<p>

There are people streaming out into the streets, all running away from the fire. They must think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. But on the run over I realised just why I'm so desperate to get to the paper mill – I just remembered what should be going on there at the moment.

Willow had said she was going to run a message over to the Quincy's today because not only would they be there, but Fiver Galli, another important co-conspirator, would be delivering a new batch of wood pulp. It'd be the ideal time to reinforce that the rebellion is by no means dead.

The thought of how many of our people might be dead spurs me on faster, and despite the smoke burning my lungs I force myself to keep sprinting towards the paper mill. The Peacekeepers aren't even going to make an effort to save anyone, that seems pretty obvious. Because I'm under no illusions that this fire's an accident – the timing's just too good, what with coming just weeks after the uprising and with quite a few key rebellion members gathered in one place, for it to be anything but deliberate.

Anyway, why should a paper mill explode? I might not be an expert, but Aaron has shown me round the place, and I can't remember seeing anything that looked all that explosive. And the place is incredibly humid and filled with lots of wet wood pulp as well as the dry finished paper. It shouldn't be able to burn all that easily, which is probably why we're getting all this awful smoke flooding the streets.

I cough. Despite the cloth tied over my mouth and nose the smoke's still getting into my lungs and making breathing difficult. It's probably crazy going the way I am, but I have to see the damage. I need to know what's happened.

The smoke just keeps getting thicker and thicker. I have to slow down to a walk because my lungs just won't let me run. The smoke gets into my eyes and makes them tear up. I have to keep blinking furiously to blink. But I don't turn back. Some force is driving me forward, like some morbid need to see exactly what's going on.

Maybe it's because people need help, and no one seems to be giving it. But I doubt it; I've never been a nice enough person to be heroic. The Girl on Fire can take her public heroing and status as the figurehead of a rebellion and keep it; I'm perfectly happy to spend my life actually working towards an end not caring if I live or die.

There are a couple of people stumbling out of the mill when I get there, one almost dragging the other out of the burning building. They make it a few metres down the street before the one being dragged collapses entirely and the other falls to his knees, hacking, retching out smoke and blood and whatever he had for lunch.

The collapsed person is Aaron.

He looks awful. His already pale skin is more ashen than usual and burn marks cover his chest, which is bare. He's covered in sweat and soot and bleeding from a shrapnel wound in his thigh. I go over to him, kneel by his side.

He's still conscious; recognises me.

"Hey… Johanna," he manages to cough out weakly. "Willow… she was in there too… With my parents… all dead… saw them die… thought you'd want to …" -He's cut off by a fit of coughing- "…know."

I swallow down the knowledge. Aaron's still alive, and I'm not letting half our rebellion die in one month, not if I can help it. Funny how far we've come, the two of us; from not talking to mutual grudging respect and cooperation. I wouldn't call it friendship, exactly, but then again I wouldn't call anything I have friendship. Friendship just gets people killed.

Then again, working together seems to be getting Aaron killed too. He's breathing, barely, and this smoke isn't going to make keeping him alive easy. Shouldn't have tried to talk. I grab his arms, start dragging him back the way I came, yell at the other one to come along as well if he wants to stay alive. He stumbles after me; I'm not too worried. He looks in good enough shape to be able to keep himself alive.

Aaron's the one I'm worried about. He's on the verge of death, and I owe Rowan's memory enough to try and keep his brother alive. Not to mention that he's one of our key members in District Seven, and one of the few technically-minded ones. Snow's trying to dispirit us by killing off as many as he can in one strike, I bet. Keeping Aaron alive should be a nice screw you to him.

The kid's _heavy_, though, and with the state my lungs are in it's hard work lugging him even to the end of the street; nowhere near far enough to escape the acrid smoke. The few people left in the street now are all in a sorry state themselves; no one's going to be able to help. All I can do is keep dragging Aaron out of the smoke and hope he holds on long enough for the medical teams who must be arriving eventually to help him.

I have to stop to rest at pretty regular intervals, though, which are far too close together for my liking. At one of them I try to figure out what I can do for him, but I can't think of anything. There's lots that needs to be done and nothing that I can think of doing. If I still had the knife I always carry on me I'd be able to give him a breathing mask, but ever since the riot weapons have been forbidden, and we figured it'd be best to look like we're sticking to the letter of the law.

Eventually I do manage to get out of the smoke and lay Aaron down, trying to do that trick for getting people breathing again we were taught while they were teaching us to swim when I was ten. It's no good, though; Aaron is dead.

Just like his brother. I couldn't save him either.


	6. Chapter 5

**So here's the next chapter. I hope you'll all enjoy this one too :)**

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><p>"I received a call from our highly distinguished president yesterday," Bastin informs Blue and I, dryly.<p>

It's just after Willow's funeral – the last for all those dead in the paper mill explosion of three days ago – and the three of us have headed deeper into the Forest of the Dead rather than go back to Victor's Village. Bastin needed to talk to us in private, and really, no one feels like going back there. No one's up to facing Willow's empty house and that feeling in the bottom of your stomach that says 'this is all your fault, if you'd just known your place she wouldn't be dead.'

Even if it's not true, even though Willow knew just what she was getting herself into every bit as well as the rest of us did. Because Willow, caring, naïve, far too nice for her own good Willow – she didn't deserve to die. Not like I do, not like Blue or Bastin or the stupid Girl on Fire do. Not like even Aaron did, speaking kindly of the dead be Snowed.

Because maybe I did sort of like Aaron in the end, but I had no illusions about what type of person he was. Maybe that's why we got on kind of decently for that little while after we'd actually started talking; we were similar, us two who'd lost relatives to the Games. I've never claimed to be a nice person, or even a good one. Neither had he, and when it comes down to it neither of us are. Were.

"Yeah?" Blue asks, and I snap back to reality quickly. No use moping over the dead, after all. I haven't shed one tear since Vince, and I'm not planning on stopping that now.

"He wanted to give his condolences for the tragic _accident_ that had just befallen our District," Bastin says. The way he puts the stress on the word tells me all I needed to know. The explosion was no accident.

"Wouldn't have thought the Capitol would care about some tiny little accident in Seven," I say, knowing full well why Snow would call but needing an opportunity to be bitterly sarcastic at _someone_. "Especially not to the level of calling friends of the dead – personally. Snow's a very busy man, after all."

"And guess who's preoccupying him?" Blue, who's missed the sarcasm completely. Can't tell if it's deliberate or not.

Well, if he's missed the sarcasm I'd better make it more obvious. "I'll have to think about it."

"Ok, ok, point taken," he snaps, before turning to Bastin in a much calmer voice. "Keep going; I want to hear this."

"He… regrets very much that the _accident_ occurred, and sincerely hopes that there will be no… similar malfunctions."

"Snowspeech." One word is all that's needed to sum up what I think of that.

Bastin replies dryly, "Yes, Johanna, that is what he said. Almost exactly word for word; some things etch themselves into your brain."

So Bastin's taking this seriously, then. Well that means that this is pretty Snow-endorsed serious, because it takes quite a bit to ruffle Seven's oldest living Victor. The news of Willow's death was the first time I'd ever seen him seriously upset, and even then he regained composure pretty quickly. There has to be more to what Snow said.

Blue must be reaching the same conclusion, because he asks, "And?"

"And… and I must have missed out a word there. He said," Bastin pauses, as if he can't bring himself to say it, "no _cause_ for similar malfunctions in the future."

That one word falls into the silence between us like an egg off a bird's nest high up in the trees. It falls and falls and falls, and while there's a sense that something will happen you can't stop it, nothing does, yet. Then the egg hits the ground and shatters. Then a life is extinguished and the remains go flying everywhere. Then the full impact of what that one word means hits you full on, powerful and unstoppable as a gush of water from the Lower Dam.

Snow knows what we've been up to.

Blue goes paler than I'd thought was humanly possible, making his hair look even more orange than usual. I start swearing under my breath. Only Bastin seems unaffected by the news, but of course he would. He had time to recover before telling us. And, of course, he deliberately forgot the word to make the revelation more dramatic. The bastard.

"So what, he pretty much said that what we've been – what he _thinks_ we've been doing," Blue fills in hurriedly; at least he's got too much sense to openly admit anything, "has to stop, or else more people involved die."

"I think you've got the general gist of it, yes."

"So we've been threatened. I get that," I say. "So the question is, what are we going to do about it?"

Blue fakes scandal. "Why, do just what he wants us to, of course. Wouldn't dream of continuing."

"It'd have to be very subtle." Bastin looks the two of us up and down sternly. "Much more subtle."

"You want subtle, I can do subtle," I tell him in an angry whisper. "I'll do anything. Just don't you dare bow to the threats. Or else I'm getting the rest of us organised and leaving you out, and then subtle's going out the window. And I'm sure you know what will happen then."

It's a threat, and Bastin knows it. You can see it written all over his face. The insult to his way of running things. Yeah, well I don't care. I'm not lying when I say I'll do anything as long as the Capitol goes down with me. If threatening our District's head of rebellion is what will do it, then I'll threaten. If I have no choice but to die, then I'll die, and bring as many of them down with me as I can. It's amazing what having nothing left to lose will do for your moral compass.

* * *

><p>Over the next two and a bit months there are still clashes between Peacekeepers and Districters, but on a much smaller scale, and completely independent of any wider structure. Most of them catch me, at least, completely by surprise. Can't be helped; people are angrier than ever after the failed uprising, and Everdeen's still alive. The semi-regular updates on her upcoming marriage provide a beacon of hope to the people. Seem to, anyway; most clashes come after those broadcasts, compulsory or not.<p>

Bastin is one sneaky Victor when he wants to be. He's behind at least some of those uprisings, despite his promise to Snow and all his acting like he's going along with it. I'm only involved in the organisation of one; an uprising after one of the broadcasts, designed to look like a spontaneous show of support for the Firegirl. He's spreading himself further, using more people to organise it, playing around with the structure. Making sure people's surprise is genuine.

It seems to work. The uprisings are all put down quickly, but they stretch resources. Every so often a Peacekeeper is killed; their forces in Seven are increased after ever minor dispute, but that means that less of them are available from other Districts. And every so often we experience a sudden decrease in Peacekeepers and enforcement of rules. That's when people realise that we're not the only rebelling District, sparking more uprisings and an increase in law enforcement.

No more major production centres are disabled by Snow, probably because he realises that a sudden lack of any goods from Seven would be quite a big hint, and also because the uprisings are relatively minor, consisting of tens and maybe hundreds of people instead of the thousands involved in the first, organised one. No more of the main Rebellion structure is killed off, either. Bastin's plan is working.

Some of the uprisings are genuinely unplanned, too, and more so the more time passes. People see others rebelling and not getting punished as harshly as they thought they'd be and start joining in. It's not a victory, nor close to one. But it's a start, however small it may be.

Then, almost four months after the Firekids' Victory Tour, another mandatory broadcast is announced. It's ridiculously boring stuff, really – showing Everdeen's top six wedding dresses and getting people to vote. Don't see why they bothered to make it compulsory, since only Capitolians can vote. And while the dresses are nice they're tainted by association with the Girl Who Good As Killed My Cousin.

The broadcast is mandatory viewing but not mandatory paying attention, so I'm almost zoned out by the time Flickerman announces that they're also going to be reading out the third Quarter Quell card. That's when I start listening, because as a Victor Games business concerns me, even if I'm not mentoring this year. Then I remember that hang on, I _am_ mentoring; Willow's death leaves me as the single female Victor. Oh, joy.

The speech explaining the origin of the Quell is relatively short and to the point, and rather obviously targeted at us rebelling Districts. Undoubtedly this year they're going to create some sort of specially hellish punishment to stop us rebelling, which will backfire spectacularly because the Capitol have done so much to themselves that they've stopped understanding human nature. Of course, it's not like I'm all that bothered, except on the matter of what type of tributes I'll have to deal with. I've already been through the Arena once; you can never do that twice.

Next we get to hear all about the past Quells. There are only two of them, of course, so it's not quite as dramatic as they would have liked. During the first one Districts had to vote on their own tributes. This was won by the male tribute from Four, usually the weakest of the Career Districts due to volunteering being completely optional and not predetermined for the strongest. That year they had the sense to pick the best of their trained tributes and do it early so that they'd have a few extra months of training.

The second Quarter Quell was somewhat miraculously won by Haymitch Abernathy of Twelve. There were double the number of tributes that year, and one of the most lethal Arenas yet. Not that the last bit was technically part of the Quell. Then again, it wasn't that unexpected; Quells tend to get super-lethal Arenas designed specially; the first one was a multi-level maze with transparent walls. Drove half the tributes insane.

After that little recap – just a basic explanation with a camera shot of Snow and no shots of those Games interweaved, somewhat uncharacteristically – comes to time to announce the current Quell. Snow pulls a yellowed envelope out from a box well stocked with them and pulls out the card contained within.

"On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be Reaped from the existing pool of Victors."

Oh, _shit_.

I must have been as bad as Snow in another life, because karma just hates me. With Willow dead, I'm Seven's only living female Victor. I'm going back into the Arena, whether I like it or not.

* * *

><p>A few hours after the announcement my house is invaded by my fellow Victors. Blight, surprisingly enough, is included and comparatively un-drunk. Bastin seems every bit as composed as ever while Blue looks angry more than anything else.<p>

"How are you coping?" Bastin asks me.

"Fine. Trying to figure out how close to the centre of the Capitol they'd let a tribute get."

Blight looks confused. "Why?"

"To plan where I should blow myself and everyone around me up. A final screw you to Snow. Since I'm probably going to die, I'd rather do so on my own terms than on theirs."

"Don't be stupid," Blue tells me flatly. "There are way easier ways to do that. And more helpful ones, too."

"Yeah?"

"Think about it for a second. Which other Districts only have one female Victor?" Bastin says.

I run through them in my head. None of the Careers. District Three has two. Not Six, nor Eight. Eleven has three, though none younger than Blight. So left over we have Five, Seven, Nine, Ten, Twelve.

Twelve.

"Oh," I say out loud.

"Yes. Oh. Do you get it now, Mason?" Blue asks, a bit too harshly than I think I deserve.

"I get it."

Because I do. It's quite obvious, now it's been pointed out. The Firegirl's managed to get herself as the figurehead of our little rebellion, Snow knows how. So this little Quarter Quell has turned into a trick to sap morale – not just killing Victors whose combination of money and anger at the Games has made them natural leaders, but killing everyone's precious Girl on Fire.

Not that I'd mind, really. My anger at the Capitol and motivation for rebellion comes from a different source. But that's not the same for everyone, and it's a bit early for Katniss Everdeen to be a truly effective martyr. The people need to see more of her standing up to authority first.

Which means she needs to be alive. Dammit.

"So you're asking me to sacrifice my life to make sure that she gets out of there in one piece, more or less. Now why exactly would I want to do that?"

"Because she'd do more good than you can," says Blue, blunt and to the point.

"Yeah, well, she doesn't seem to be doing much at the moment," I snap. "What type of production delays have Twelve had? None, that's what. And you know what I feel about the girl; there's no way I'm saving her Snow-endorsed life."

"Even if it means staying alive in the bargain?" Bastin asks.

"And how do you think you can do that?"

Instead of replying straight off, Bastin says, "Come to my office; I want to show you something."

So the lot of us troop outside and into Bastin's place, where we head upstairs and pile into his office. He fiddles around with papers on his desk until he seems to find what he's looking for, looks up and speaks.

"Right. We've got fifteen minutes of safety, so let's make this short. Johanna, in answer to your previous question – we're going to get her out of the Arena halfway through the Games."

"Why?" I ask, despite the feeling in the back of my head that should tell me I should know the answer.

"Come on, Mason," Blue says. "You're smarter than this. What do you think will happen to her if she does win the Quell? Either Snow will arrange a little _accident_" – the word is loaded with bitterness; none of us have forgotten what happened to Willow – "or she'll lose all her status as the figurehead. But if we bust her – and everyone who's with her and happens to be alive – out of the Arena, we've just made her into a proper little mockingjay, and sparked a proper little rebellion. The girl who kept finding loopholes in what seemed like an impossible task."

"Point taken, but where do you think you're going to take her once we spring her from the Arena? The wilderness? You are joking, right?"

"District Thirteen."

I stare at Bastin. "Have the two of you completely lost your minds? Maybe it's the last place anyone would look, but I've seen the images of what nuclear radiation does to you. I think I'll take my chances and try to blow a good chunk of the Capitol along with myself, thanks."

"Watch the footage," Blight slurs, speaking up for the first time. "Same… every time."

"District Thirteen really does exist, Johanna," Bastin says, deathly serious. "That's where we'll take her. And you, if you're still alive by then."

"Okay." I need to make sure I'm hearing them correctly. "So you want me to risk my life to keep someone who I can't stand alive, just so that we can do what no one's done before and break out of an Arena before somehow getting all of us to a place that's probably only a myth spread by people with too much hope and not enough brains?"

"Got it in one," Blue, at least, can kind of see the funny side. "So are you in?"

"Once you explain why no one told me about your District Thirteen theories then I'll think about it."

Bastin looks genuinely sorry, but knowing him it's probably an act. "You're quite a new member, Johanna. I'm sorry, but we couldn't tell you everything."

"And frankly, we thought you'd know already," Blue contributes. "It's not like it's not a widespread theory round here or anything."

I glare at him. It's not like I care about what anyone else thinks, but it would have been nice to have been trusted with this information a little sooner. Even so, what choice do I have? It's not like I have anything to lose, anyway.

"Okay, I'll do it."


	7. Chapter 6

**From now on we start to merge with canon. So: Disclaimer time! Needless to say, this is a non-profit work of fanfiction which I write for my own enjoyment and hopefully the enjoyment of the few people who happen to read it. A bit of dialogue later in this chapter is taken directly from Catching Fire. This will not be the last time it happens, and much of the plot in this part of the story is, alas, not of my own creation. So basically, if you recognise any snatch of dialogue odds are I didn't write it. **

**Do you guys think that the above paragraph is enough for me to cover my ass, or should I put specific disclaimers over any chapters which feature borrowed dialogue?**

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><p>The months before the Reaping pass relatively quickly. I spend as much of my time as I can training, building up strength and stamina and general skills with my axe. If I want to survive the Arena against people who've been through there before I need to step up my game, especially when it won't only be me I'm trying to keep alive.<p>

Bastin and Blue join in as best they can, though Blue's the only one young enough to make a significant improvement. He won his Games just over a decade ago, as opposed to Bastin whose Games were closer to the first Quarter Quell than the second. They even manage to drag Blight along for a few sessions; the guy's almost worse than useless, but even he manages to improve enough that you can see how he managed to get out of an Arena alive, once.

Tension in the District grows greater and greater, as people's anger over having not only us, their symbols of hope, but also their beloved Girl on Fire removed increases. Outbreaks of violence still occur, but Bastin does his best to convince people to lie low.

"We want to wait until we bust the mockingjay out of the Arena and then have everyone act at once," he tells me one time, safe in his office with the bugs down. "That should stretch the Capitol's resources thinly enough for us to get control of one or two Districts which we can then use as launch pads to recapture the rest of Panem."

It's a good enough plan, I suppose – and clearly one that's been constructed with Panem-wide cooperation. He's been talking to people in other Districts.

Then, after what seems like an age and yet at the same time like no time at all, the day of the Reaping comes. They line the four of us Victors up in front of the stage and crowd the rest of the Reaping-age kids around us; their parents, as usual, will watch on screens in other parts of the District. All you can feel emanating from the children – teenagers, really - is relief that it's not them, mixed in with grief that their idols will probably have to die and, from the older ones, anger.

It's a farce, really. The female ball contains just one slip, the thinness of the paper making it nearly invisible from this angle. Epoch Marianas – who somehow still hasn't been sacked – makes a great show of digging around at the bottom until he finds it and calls my name out, like we didn't know it was going to happen.

I begin making my way up the steps as he hooks it out and unfolds it, which gets a laugh out of the kids below. By the time he's read my name out I'm almost where I should be anyway. All that's left for me to do is stand there and wonder which one of my fellow Victors will be called to die.

He pulls Bastin's name out of the slip. Because of course that isn't rigged – Bastin's the leader of the rebellion here in Seven; Snow totally doesn't want him out of the way. He makes his way up with his usual composure. The trap has just been activated.

Only Marianas has to ask for volunteers. And Blight – stupid, drunken, clueless Blight – raises his hand and walks onto the stage.

* * *

><p>I'm not expecting any visitors, which is why it's so shocking when Bastin, of all people, finds his way into the room I'm confined in for the next little while.<p>

"No mentors allowed to see the tributes before the train," I quote at him bitterly, remembering how no one would let me see Vince.

"Yes, well I'm not mentoring this year."

"I wasn't meant to be mentoring last year and they still wouldn't let me in," I say, before something hits me. "Wait, you're not mentoring this year?"

"They were convinced to make an exception, seeing as I was as eligible for reaping as you were. And no, I am not mentoring this year."

I stare at him. "You are kidding, right? How is that possible? And why in Panem not?"

"No, Johanna, I am not joking. While there is a rule forbidding any more than one mentor per tribute it does not say that this limit must be kept, even if there is more than one eligible mentor."

"Still, why would you not mentor? You can't seriously say you're leaving me to the mercies of Blue, can you?"

"He was your mentor once," Bastin points out mildly.

"Yeah, and he was a Snow-endorsed awful one," I say, indignant.

"That wasn't his fault. Just because your plan meant that you couldn't allow him to help…"

I take the point without comment, instead pressing Bastin further. "But we need your help. With… inter-District alliance negotiations and so on."

He knows I mean the rebellion and our plan to somehow keep the Firegirl alive. "Blue can do as good a job of that as I can. There'll be other people there as willing to make allies as you are. And if you don't trust him that much then go negotiate yourself."

"I still don't get why you're so determined to stay…"

"I just think I'll be of more use here," Bastin tells me firmly. And so that's that.

"Any last words of advice, then, before you leave?"

"Try and get Twelve on your side. Katniss Everdeen, I mean. She's young and a good fighter, and the fact that this is the year after her Games means that she'll be isolated among the Victors; I know you don't like her, but this was you'll have an ally who'll jump at the chance to have you and should be easy to backstab."

He's reminding me of the promise I made. Don't worry, Bastin, I'll keep it – if only because it's the best thing I can do to bring down the Capitol. This time last year Vince had less than a year to live. By this time next year, with a bit of luck, Snow will be ancient history. If I have anything to do with it, that is.

"Anyone else?" I ask, hoping he'll get the hint to tell me which Districts are the most trustworthy.

"Get Three in on your alliance, because while none of them are the best fighters sometimes you need a brain on your side. Don't bother with the Careers; they'll probably have their own alliance. Other than Four; they always get the short end of the stick and should be quite happy they have other options now."

"And I'm friends with Finnick," I add, testing the waters. "That should help, shouldn't it?"

"Yes. Finnick Odair's probably the best choice you've got there. He's a good fighter and should get you sponsors."

And on we go, working our way through the lists of Districts. Under the guise of telling me about which allies I should chose Bastin instead tells me which Districts are more closely linked to the Rebellion. All of them are, to some extent, but Five, Nine and Ten don't have Victors actively working like Bastin, Blue or even I are. One and Two are to all appearances loyal to the Capitol.

"I'd better go and thank Blight," Bastin says once we're done.

And so I'm left alone in the room once more for another ten minutes until I'm escorted out and into the train.

* * *

><p>"Bastin tell you he's not coming?" I ask Blue the second Blight and I get on the train. Getting on here's bringing back too many memories of the last time I made this ride into the Capitol. Too many memories of Vince. Any distraction, no matter how small, will do fine.<p>

"Yeah. I guess he told you the reasoning, too," he says as we make our way down into the television compartment.

"He did," I reply. "Well, vaguely anyway. Seems like a load of snowspeech to me."

"Not to me it doesn't. The guy has a point, and really he won't make that much difference tagging along. I've got everything under control, Mason, don't worry."

"If you say so."

The scepticism must show in my voice, because he glares at me. "And I do. So why don't you get some rest?"

"I'm not your usual tribute; don't try to baby me," I snap, but go off to my bedroom compartment anyway because I want some time to myself. Blue isn't as tactless as he seems sometimes because he lets me go without the usual comment and the smallest of sympathetic looks.

The hours till dinner pass slowly and agonisingly, but finally the food arrives. It's a silent dinner; any attempts Marianas makes at conversation are snubbed by Blue and I, who hate him, and returned by Blight, adding insult to injury to our escort who can't stand _him_. The food is as good as Capitol food ever is, but as usual it's over too quickly and we head to the television room to watch the Reaping recaps.

Gloss and Cashmere de Montfort are drawn from District One, showing that while pretty much all the Reapings that could be were rigged, not all were for pure punishment. I don't see what either of these two Capitol Clones could have done wrong, but this is pretty much the most dramatic option they could take, so guess what happened.

Enobaria from Two is drawn – "She's just a bit too psycho to actually keep around", Blue quips – but her male counterpart is Brutus whatshisname. I only vaguely know the guy, what with keeping to myself among the Victors generally and especially avoiding most of those who used to be Careers, but I've seen enough of him to know that it's no surprise when he volunteers.

Three's tributes are Nuts and Volts – well you can't have one without the other, can you? – while Finnick and his crazy lover Annie Cresta are drawn from Four. Another attempt at drama _and_ punishment, I bet, only this try at drama goes wrong as old Mags volunteers for Cresta. Five get Blight's drinking buddy and a woman whose name I think is Viola, Six the two Victors who I just think of as Morphling Addicts One and Two.

After showing us – my walking onto the stage even before they call my name, Blight volunteering for Bastin – they show Eight. Cecelia Rhyes who's obviously another play for drama, what with her three sobbing children – only one even old enough to be of Reaping age. Then I remember what Nyssa Fourelms said about not getting textiles from Eight and start to wonder if this isn't just an attempt to make these Games more dramatic, because surely the Firekids just aren't enough. If Eight is in rebellion, too, then this is punishment. What would Cecelia have done to risk her kids, I wonder, and make a mental note to try and talk to her sometime and find out.

I'm so engrossed in these thoughts that I only vaguely notice the next three tributes, only snapping back to attention to see Ando and Morgan, District Ten's only living Victors, being drawn. Then it's Chaff and Seeder who're picked from Eleven, and now time for District Twelve, the big finale.

Predictably Everdeen's picked, what with being the only female. How alike the two of us are. Yeah, right. She got Peeta, Rowan died. My family's all dead yet we can see hers on the screen right in front of us. I'm trying to help the rebellion she started, and she doesn't seem to have a clue. And yet I'm going to be the one trying to keep her alive in the Arena. Typical.

They draw Haymitch Abernathy instead of Lover Boy, but that doesn't make a difference as he volunteers straight away. What a moron. Doesn't he realise how much easier it'd be to keep his precious Firegirl alive if he, I don't know, _didn't_ go with her into a place from where only one of them can return alive? Idiot.

But as is, it should make my job easier – whether they're really in love or not, I get the feeling the Girl on Fire cares a lot more about Mellark than Abernathy – I'm not complaining. He seems like he'd be a lot easier to manipulate than her, anyway. And I might not even have the District Two-like urge to murder him. Always a plus.

* * *

><p>When we roll into the Capitol a smirking Blue watches as Blight and I are escorted into the Remake Centre, and I resist the urge to ht him. Just because he doesn't have to go through the torture again doesn't mean he has any right to rub it in our faces. Well, my face; Blight's too off his own to care.<p>

"You are one lucky bastard," I tell Blue, half in jest and half in bitterness.

He grins back; a look that says that he's not going to stop lording it over me. "I know. Now go on, you have a makeover to sit through. Have fun!"

"Screw you," I say, reluctantly doing as he tells me.

The smirk on his face just gets even wider. "You know you want to."

I turn around and give him a rude gesture just as the doors close behind me and I'm left alone with my prep team. Only one of the three from my original Games – the rest, she tells me, were promoted. Good riddance, I think, only don't say, and manage to make the most of the hours of torture by bullying my prep team around. No more acting the weakling these Games – I'm free to be myself.

So when my stylist comes in to dress me in a carbon copy of the costume I wore six years ago, I don't even bother pretending I like it. Once she puts the finishing touches on and asks me what I think, it is very very tempting to just tell her flat out how much I hate the stupid generic tree look. But I'll need her skills, dubious as they are, for the interviews, so I restrain myself.

"I like it every bit as much as I did last time I wore it," I tell her, relishing the use of the double meaning I mastered during the buildup to my original Games. "Don't bother escorting me to the chariots; I know my own way."

The little reminder that I have been here before is enough to set her bursting into tears. I'm not any old innocent tribute, I'm a past Victor – and if I'm here, that means the Capitol's favourite star crossed lovers are here too. Everything has to be about them doesn't it?

Pushing the old resentment to where it usually lies in the back of my head, I make my way to the chariots. If I'm going to have to be allies with Katniss Everdeen then I can't let her see just how much I hate her. I won't be nice – I'm not going to stoop to that – but I'll just give her the usual venom. None of the special batch prepared specially for her ever since Vince died.

Once I get to the ground floor I find out that somehow, despite the simplicity of my costume, I'm one of the last people in. Looking around for someone who I can actually put up with I spot an almost-naked Finnick flirting with Katniss Everdeen, of all people. And to think I thought he had taste.

Finn spots me and saunters over, leaving the Firegirl for her approaching fiancé. "Hey, Johanna. Want a sugar cube?"

He holds out a pile on his hand and I take one, popping it into my mouth and letting my saliva slowly dissolve it into individual sugar crystals. "Hey, Finnick. Long time no see."

"Bet you didn't think next time we'd meet it'd be like this," he says, suddenly slipping into serious-Finnick mode for a second. It's a contrast to his usual, public, persona, and to who he'd seemed to be during the few seconds I saw him flirting with Everdeen. Not many people get to see Finnick like this. But then again, other than maybe Blue and Bastin he's the closest thing I have to a living friend.

"No. I never expected to see you flirting with the Girl on Fire, of all people," I quip. "What would Cresta think?"

"_Annie_," he stresses the first name; Finnick's girlfriend is the one thing we've never agreed on, "is safe back at home in District Four. She wouldn't begrudge me a bit of harmless fun."

"But Katniss Everdeen? Really? I thought you had taste."

"Not all of us have your vendetta against her, you know," he points out. Then he drops his voice conspiratorially. "And anyway, Chaff and I are having a competition to see who can make her most uncomfortable. Winner gets ten bucks from the loser. Want to play?"

It's petty cash for people as rich as us Victors are, really, but it's the principle of betting for money more than anything else. Not to mention the idea of trying to freak out Katniss Everdeen is a very appealing one at the moment. Just because I have to protect her in the arena doesn't mean I can't have a bit of fun outside of it.

"It's on, Trident-boy," I say, holding out my hand to shake on it. And then we notice that the chariots are about to leave and so go our separate ways.

* * *

><p>Probably predictably enough, the two from Twelve completely steal the show. Just because they managed to get a stylist who actually knows like he's doing; I've ruled out these chariot rides as a way of trying to get sponsors. Not that it really matters; if I ally with them in the Arena sponsors'll be effectively shared, especially with Haymitch in on it. Even so. It'd be nice to have everything not go so smoothly for the Girl on Fire, just for once.<p>

Still I can't really complain. For some bizarre reason I do seem to have picked up my own fanbase in the Capitol, and plenty of cheers go my way as the chariot makes it's way through the streets. Maybe it's because I'm one of the younger Victors here. Actually, I realise, doing some quick mental maths, I _am_ the youngest here, other than Twelve. Huh.

Soon enough the procession is over, and we're disembarking the carriages following another of Snow's speeches. I spot the Firegirl getting molested by a seemingly drunk Chaff and grin. I still have a bet to win, after all.

So I make my way over to where our two latest Victors are standing by the lifts, pulling off my atrocious leafy headdress and throwing it to the ground behind me. Someone else can clean it up.

"Isn't my costume awful?" I ask the Firegirl the second I see her. There has to be some excuse to make conversation, and what better than delightfully vapid girl talk for saying absolutely nothing and yet containing hidden venom? "My stylist's the biggest idiot in the Capitol. Our tributes have been trees for forty years under her. Wish I'd gotten Cinna. You look fantastic." A blatant lie.

She's obviously thrown but manages to come up with some sort of answer anyway. "Yeah, he's been helping me design my own clothing line. You can see what he can do with velvet."

"I have. On your tour. That strapless number you wore in District Two? The deep blue one with the diamonds? So gorgeous I wanted to reach through the screen and tear it right off your back." Literally; that night was one of the ones I wanted to murder Everdeen more than usual. It's why I remember the dress so clearly; Willow had been engaging me in conversation about it in an attempt to distract me from Vince's death. I miss Willow, I realise with a sudden pang.

The lift arrives and we step into it. I still have a bet to win, and inserting special venom into seemingly harmless words, while fun, isn't going to win me it. So I strip off the rest of the Snow-awful tree outfit, leaving me standing there in nothing but the day I was born.

"That's better," I say, as if it's a casual thing, and smile when I see Everdeen's reaction. I spent two years in the Community Centre, where you can only survive if you get used to casual nakedness. But the Girl on Fire has something of a thing about avoiding it. You only need to watch the replays of last Games to see it; she even made Mellark wear a backpack over his groin, for Snow's sake.

Then I notice the way she's eyeing her District Partner and grin to myself. I don't like Loverboy much more than Firegirl, but jealousy is a powerful tool, and I can't stand her. Anything that pisses her off, however petty, is a victory for me, so I strike up a semi-flirtatious conversation about Mellark's talent with him for the rest of the short lift ride.

Katniss Everdeen's glares follow me out of the elevator. Mission accomplished.


	8. Chapter 7

**Hey, everyone. I hope you're still reading…**

**A couple of things to point out for this one: later in the chapter the 'internet' is referred to – this isn't the internet as we know it so much as the Panem equivalent, called as such for methods of convenience and because I think of any other name that isn't horribly corny. And there's a very minor reference to my oneshot 'He Who Fights Monsters' – very, very minor and it wouldn't make any difference whether you've read it or not, but hey, shameless self promotion and all that… ;)**

**None of the dialogue in this chapter is taken from CF, but some events are. Suzanne Collins owns the Hunger Games and not me, et cetera.**

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><p>"Aren't you going down to training?" I ask Blight when he stumbles into breakfast. It's a few minutes past ten and, while we're supposed to be down there already, I have absolutely no problem with being fashionably late.<p>

He shakes his head blearily. "Nope. No point."

I shrug, because really, what is there to say to that? It's not like what he chooses to do really matters to me; I'm only going down because it'll help bring Snow down as well.

"Johanna-" Blue calls as I stand up and prepare to leave the table.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Be nice to Mellark and Everdeen. Will do. Well, mostly."

"Seriously…"

I step out of the room with a cheery wave. "Oh, come on, Blue-y, you can trust me. What have I ever done to make you think otherwise?"

He yells back a reply which I can't make out. Hitting the button for the lift, I grin to myself. I can just imagine the look on his face. What? Depending on how much the Firegirl decides to screw up the plan, I might only have a few days left to live. Might as well enjoy myself, and pissing off Blue is as good a way as any.

Once I step out of the lift into the training centre I see that Blight's far from alone in choosing not to come down. There are only about a dozen people down there. Quickly I glance around to identify who they are. The Firekids, unsurprisingly. Nuts and Volts. Blondie and her brother. Chaff. District Two, who seem to be enjoying beating the stuffing out of the training dummies. But we're all Victors here; it'll take more than that to intimidate us. Mags, which means that… yes, Finnick's here too. Over at the tridents, somewhat predictably.

Well, each to their own, after all. I know I'm here to make allies, but a quick scan of the room shows that Mellark's currently occupied with spears and Brutus and Chaff, and I really can't bring myself to face talking to Everdeen, so I head over to the axes for a nice relaxing few hours of pummelling training dummies. It's quite liberating being able to show off and improve my skills after the last time I was in here, so it it's about an hour into things before I look up and glance around the room again. A few more people have arrived since I did, but we're still nowhere near at full capacity.

Finnick has found his way over to knot tying and is currently hanging himself for the Firegirl's amusement. I roll my eyes, and then stifle a laugh as she promptly turns her back on him and walks away towards fire starting. The irony is not lost on anybody.

"Nice one, Casanova," I yell over to Finnick.

"Shut up, Johanna," he fires back, making his way over to me. "I'd like to see you try."

"You just want to see two girls flirting," I accuse him, grinning.

He pulls a face, mood strangely sombre. Oops. I've no clue of the specifics of what he gets up to in the Capitol, but I can't imagine that the connotations of my comment would go over too well.

"Sorry." It's a barely audible apology, but it's the best he's going to get. I have some standards to maintain, after all.

"No problem. Though we'd better split up; can't be seen consorting with the enemy too long."

"Which one of us is which?" I ask.

He shrugs. "Neither, either. Don't suppose it matters in the end. Now Mags beckons; see you around, Johanna." We are both on the same side, after all. I know that much - suspected it way before I even joined and had it confirmed once the Quell had been announced and Bastin figured it was best to let me know which Victors I wouldn't have to worry about.

"Better hope your flirting skills improve by then, Finnick."

He grins at me and turns away. I look around for an abandoned station to go visit and eventually go to settle on wrestling. From what Vince told me last year – I swallow down a pang of pain at the thought – this was a station that Mellark conspicuously avoided, just like Everdeen and archery. And since we all know how the latter turned out it doesn't need Three-intelligence to reason that the Fireboy will eventually turn up here. I knew there was some good in my advice to look for what people avoid as well as for what they seem to be drawn to.

Sure enough eventually Mellark pulls himself away from his knife-throwing circle and looks around the room, evidently searching for people he hasn't talked to. He spots me and heads over, taking the long way around to avoid the puddle of vomit left by Blight's drinking buddy.

"Hey, Johanna," he says when he sees me.

"Hello, Peeta. I'd offer you to join me, but I doubt your fiancée would approve."

He laughs. "No, I don't expect she would. Not that I'd blame her – why is it that I always seem to be bumping into you when you're naked?"

I look down at my well oiled and completely nude body and shrug. "I've no idea. Why do you think?"

"I think you're just trying to scandalise Katniss."

"And you'd be absolutely right. It's her own fault for being so prudish. Speaking of which, next time you see Finnick remind him he owes me ten bucks. Or Chaff, come to think of it."

You can see the pieces of information click together in his head. There are a few beats and then Mellark bursts into almost hysterical laughter. A few people turn around and give us odd looks.

"You mean you guys put money on that?"

"Yep. Don't tell Katniss, will you?" It feels odd using her first name, but I can't well do anything else, not when I'm talking to Peeta Mellark.

"I won't."

From there the conversation moves onto other topics. Turns out that this guy's a lot easier to talk to than he seems, which is saying something. By the time they call for lunch I'm thinking that Peeta's at least tolerable, if still not completely likeable. And in return I manage to spare him many of my scathing remarks. It's a start, if nothing else.

* * *

><p>I'm not entirely sure who starts pushing the tables together, but I do know exactly when I decide to join in with a vengeance - the second that I see the look on Katniss Everdeen's face at the prospect of having to sit with us. Because Snow forbid she sully herself with the company of real Victors and not anyone who won their Games with a bit of luck and a fancy trick.<p>

Yes, technically that's how I won my Games too. So not the point.

Not to mention it seems to make the overlooking Gamemakers' moods sour ever so slightly. Seems like they don't like us actually showing a bit of unity for a change. Well too bad; it's not like any of them have ever done anything to make us want to make their lives easier. The Capitol's gone and announced this Quarter Quell, gone and flipped all the rules on us without warning. Guilt tripping them's the least we can do, and every little bit counts, after all.

The Quell was designed to split us apart, I bet. Designed to break the bonds between Victors that were growing tighter; designed to splinter our sapling rebellion, among other things. Too bad it's backfired, then – all it's doing is making us grow closer. Close enough that de Montfort and I manage to share a table without trying to kill each other, although with enough frosty looks to freeze hell over twice.

Lunch is spent in relative friendliness, swapping stories and doing our best to freak out the Firekids. I, thankfully, manage to sit at the other end of the table from them and spend break talking to Finnick, who seems to have given up on the Girl on Fire for now and instead left her to Nuts and Volts, who she oddly enough seems to get on quite well with. Huh.

Afterwards we split back up into different stations. I work my way through the survival stations now after spending the morning on combat, and manage to be left alone for the most part. About ten minutes after I get to the fire-starting station I notice Seeder heading towards edible plants. She's Eleven, so if she's bothering to spend time there then there must be a good reason, and in the Arena odds are I'll be feeding more people than myself, so I follow her over.

"I always tell my kids to go here, no matter how good with plants they think they are," she mutters to me once she notices my presence. "Good thing I follow my own advice."

I barely recognise any of the plants on the table in front of us. Turns out my hunch was right.

"You know what any of these are?" I ask her.

"Not many. That one over there's a coconut. There was an experiment when I was your age; they tried to see if we could grow them in the District. It failed. They figured they'd let Four stick to it. Parts of it are a lot more tropical than we are."

"So these are tropical plants?"

"Seems like it. I don't know enough to be sure, but it's a decent guess."

"So what'll the Arena be like?"

Seeder pulls a face. "Hot. And humid. That's as much as I can tell you."

"Unless they decide to screw with our heads and dump us in an Arena they haven't prepared us at all for, just for kicks."

"I don't think so. The audience is too invested in us for the Gamemakers to want to pull cheap tricks like that."

I shrug and let the trainer guide me through the basics of the plants I see before me. Once she leaves us with a test to see how much we've managed, I turn to Seeder and ask her how things are going in Eleven. I know they've rebelled but not how much.

"Back home?" she says. "Oh, decent enough, I suppose. We've had some crop difficulties this year."

"Yeah?"

"As I said, less crops were harvested than usual. I don't know how significant an impact it had on food stocks in Panem in the long run. We noticed the shortage a bit, of course, but as far as I'm aware we always have a surplus on important crops just to cover for a bad year. Why, did you feel it in Seven?"

So there was something going on there, but probably not to the same extent she would have liked. Ah well. Something is better than nothing, and provides a basis for further 'crop troubles' now that the Quell has turned out to be what it is.

"I wouldn't know," I say honestly. "I haven't had to worry about food since my Games. Prices might have gone up, but I didn't notice if they had."

"Any difficulties in your part of Panem?" Seeder asks, and now I can tell she's probing me for information just as much as I was.

"A few mechanical difficulties. A dam turned out to not have been built to proper standards and burst once we had a storm. There was some kind of issue with the paper mill; it exploded. Willow was in there."

Seeder's hand flies to her mouth. "Willow…" she whispers.

"She died," I say, my voice sombre. "I thought you'd have heard."

The woman from Eleven opens her mouth to say something, but the sudden quiet that falls across the room stops her from voicing the thought. We both look around, searching for the reason. We soon find it.

Katniss Everdeen is standing at the archery station, shooting arrow after arrow perfectly into flying targets. It's a brilliant performance. So, of course, I find myself hating her more than ever.

* * *

><p>I walk down the rabbit's warren of corridors in the mostly forgotten levels of the building on the afternoon of the second day of training. It's a few hours till they serve dinner and I really don't have the patience to spend that time in the presence of the Girl Who was on Fire, nor to head back up to level seven and put up with whoever happens to be up there. Blue's the most bearable prospect of the lot, and the irony that things have come to that almost makes me laugh out loud.<p>

"What's so funny, Mason?"

I look up from watching my feet pace the floor to meet the icily intelligent gaze of Marchessa Denoro, District Three's other female Victor. Odd. I didn't hear her coming. My senses are decent enough, and it's not like Three's renowned for its physical prowess. As far as I'm aware the only reason Denoro won her Games was luck, a cleverly thrown token and a crossbow.

"Nothing," I snap. "What are you doing down here, Denoro?"

"I could ask you the same question."

"Maybe, but I asked first. So spill."

"Has anyone ever commented on how often you act like a five year old?" District Three says dryly. "But if you must know, I was down in our lab."

She's talking about the room the four Victors from Three have somehow managed to persuade the people who run this place to let them transform into a miniature electronics workshop. Don't ask me how many strings they had to pull to let that happen, though I bet it was a lot. Then again, it's not like it's completely unheard of for us to be allowed rooms down here – District Two has their gym, and Morgan Spike from Ten who has music composition as her talent has rigged another one up to be better for sound, or some other crap like that. Actually, I didn't see her at training; she's probably down there now.

"Doing what?"

Maybe I'm being overly suspicious. I don't care. I've never liked Denoro – she always acts like she thinks she's better than the rest of us, just because she knows her way around almost any technological item you care to mention. And she seems to somehow have had a way to get out of selling her body to Snow. Oh, she pretends she's still doing it; turns up to parties with every appearance of being forced to, disappears in the middle of mentoring duty with what have been deemed more important matters just as Finnick does every so often. But I know better – there's this look people get after a while, and Marchessa Denoro doesn't have it. And she's far too pretty for Snow not to have approached her. Doesn't do anything to highlight her looks, but she has them, behind the tied back frizzy hair and the constant expression of disdain for us mere mortals.

"Researching, if you must know. Two people I actually like are going into that Arena; I'd rather at least one of them makes it out alive. You know what they say – no, wait, actually you wouldn't – 'know your enemy'."

I scowl at the insult to my intelligence. "If you really want to help them, why aren't you searching for sponsors?"

"Johan's handling that. He does his part, I do mine."

I'm still sceptical. "So you figured that researching us – from your little workshop, of all places – would help Nuts or Volts win."

She glares at me. "_Wiress_ and _Beetee_ have names. Use them. Or can't you handle two syllable words, Mason?"

"I can handle them just fine, _Marchessa_. You're just avoiding the question."

"There's this little thing called the internet. You can't get it easily in the Districts, especially not somewhere like Seven. But it lets me find out practically anything I want. What I've found out about some of your friends would blow your empty little head."

"Oh yeah?"

"'Yeah', as your primitive little vocabulary would put it. Let me start with the basic. You do know how Finnick Odair won his Games?"

"Well, yeah," I say, unsure where she's going with this. "It's pretty common knowledge."

"Do you know who he killed to get there?"

"De Montfort's sister. Good riddance, if you ask me. What is your point?"

"Who did he kill before that?"

"How am I supposed to know? Some girl." I strain my memory back and fail to find anything important.

"His own District partner," Denoro says with some satisfaction, and looks expectantly at me to see my reaction.

I don't give her one. "Your point being?"

"He killed his own District partner. He didn't even save her for last, like any decent person would have done. He just went and killed her. And this is the type of monster you're friends with. Aren't you scared he'll kill you, stab your friendship in the back in the Arena?"

"This is the Hunger Games, District Three. We all do what we have to to survive. You did, I did, Finnick did. Why should I judge him? Really, if you're trying to turn us all against each other, you're doing a terrible job. Go and find some other career."

She shrugs. "Suit yourself. But when you're lying bleeding at the end of a trident once he's broken your alliance in the Arena, remember that I warned you."

Really, for someone so apparently smart that was an awfully bad move, I reflect as Denoro moves away down the corridor. She's obviously trying to tear whatever alliances exist apart, but why? Not to help Nuts or Volts, I bet. How would Finnick and I breaking our friendship do anything to help either of them win? Not to mention that even she has to realise how pathetic an attempt that was, really. If she was actually trying to help then she'd be much sharper; the type of cutting remark I've watched her pull off on Blondie. No, there has to be a better reason. All I have to do now is figure out what it is.

As I watch her black-haired figure disappear around a corner, a thought hits me. Finn and I are known to be friends, sure, but in the Games friends tend to avoid each other so that they don't have to kill one another or watch the other die.

How did Marchessa Denoro know Finnick and I are planning to ally?


	9. Chapter 8

**Sorry to everyone for not replying to your reviews – I've been really, really busy. Exams are over now, though, so there shouldn't be as large a delay this time…**

**Again a bit of dialogue in this chapter is nabbed from canon.**

**So yeah. I hope you enjoy.**

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><p>Training passes as training does, with only about half of us present on any given day. I, along with Finnick and the Firekids, form part of the half dozen of us who have nothing better to do than actually turn up. Blight is one of the few tributes who don't seem to have the initiative to even poke their head out of the lift into the training centre except to go and get their training score, which is compulsory. I pull a seven, thanks to our resident Gamemaker mole – I don't even know who they are, just that they exist – helping to make me as unnoticeable as possible. The Firekids both get twelves. I wonder how they pissed off the other Gamemakers; something like that is practically a death sentence. Well, it would be usually.<p>

When interview prep day rolls around Blue doesn't even bother to make a half hearted attempt to guide Blight and I through the same familiar mannerisms I've coached tributes in for years. Instead he tells me at breakfast – Blight is nowhere in sight – that I have the day off while he goes to arrange alliances for the Arena.

"Hey," I say, "don't I get any input in this? It's my Games, not yours. I think I should get to make my own allies."

"Since when have you gotten what you think you deserve?"

"Since now," I tell him, glaring. "Letting me go to this talk is the last decent thing you can do to me before I probably die a long and painful death on national television. Do you want that on your conscience, Blue-y?"

"Don't try to guilt trip me, Mason. It won't work. But stop calling me Blue-y and I'll think about it."

"You'll get a day off if you let me go. A whole day to do whatever you want without having to bother with any of this. It could be your last day off for months."

"Good point," he concedes. "Ok, it starts in half an hour down in the basements. Go to Three's workshop and keep heading straight from there. Then take the second left, the third right and the first right after that. You should find yourself in a dead end that opens up into a large-ish room with a bunch of empty crates in it."

"And we couldn't use one of these rooms, why?"

"Because this is a top secret alliance meeting. We don't want the other people in the Arena to find out who's allying with who."

And so I find myself pushing open the door to a room the same blinding shade of white as the catacomb corridors about an hour later. Other than a pile of crates up against one corner the room is almost empty. Finnick's perched on top of a crate with his arms hooked behind his knees and his back against another crate. On the other side of the room Johan Taly leans against the wall, hands in his pockets. Every so often he directs a look at Finnick that clearly indicates he wishes the younger man would be anywhere but here. The only other person in the room is Seeder, who's pushed a crate against the wall next to the door and is using it as a chair.

"Is this the super secret alliance meeting?" I ask, strolling into the room.

"I don't think you're supposed to ask if something's a secret meeting," Johan remarks dryly as I climb up to sit next to Finnick.

"You know what I meant, Pyro."

He shakes his head in response to the nickname. "Yes, this is the official non-Career alliance meeting, with a representative from each District. We're waiting on Six, Eight and Twelve."

"Not on Aida we're not. She said that Woof is far too old to be of any use and that Cecelia's refusing to do anything but die quietly." It's Seeder who says this. "Her children, you see…"

Following this statement is a reflective silence which is broken by Haymitch Abernathy throwing the door open. He looks around at the lot of us with an unreadable look on his face. Then again, the man does hold all the power here; it's not difficult to figure out that our goal is to protect the stupid Girl Who Will Get Burned Someday Soon.

"Johan?" he asks.

"On it already," the man from District Three replies. He doesn't seem to do anything, but a couple of seconds later he pulls his hand out of his pocket and speaks again. "All clear. We should have half an hour before anyone starts to get suspicious about anything."

"What are you doing?" Seeder asks.

"Swapping the audio around. I just sent a signal to Beetee who's done technical stuff you won't understand to reroute the signal from the cameras in here to him before it goes to the recorder. Se he's keeping the visuals the same but substituting the audio for a pre written script. Which means, Odair, that we have to get into a fight at some point, something I'm looking forward to greatly."

"But won't whoever's watching this realise that our mouths are moving differently to what we're actually saying?" Finnick asks, bristling at the jab but ignoring it.

"Yeah, but you can't possibly think a room like this has people watching live recordings," Johan points out, still glaring at him. "No; it's simply a camera that records what's going on here in case anyone ever wants to look back later. By the time anyone does bother odds are it'll be too late. The audio substitution is really just another safety precaution."

"And how are you even putting in audio that none of us has actually said?" I'm sceptical. Quite understandably, if you ask me.

"Oh, that's easy. We have recordings of all your voices. You learn how to synthesise audio from just that at school before you even hit Reaping age."

"Which is absolutely fascinating," Haymitch drawls, obviously not meaning a word. "But we do have planning to get on with."

"But what about District Six?" Seeder asks.

"You think any of them are in any condition to join this conversation?" I say.

The males all half grin at that, while Seeder shoots me a reproachful look. Eventually we do decide to just get on with the planning; someone else can inform District Six what they need to do at a later date. Which, as the two morphling addicts are kind of useless, involves little more than acting as human shields for both of the precious Firekids.

"So basically, we all need to find a way to keep Katniss Everdeen's thankless self alive till we can break out of the Arena," I sum up. "Am I right?"

A round of nods confirms that.

"Right," says Finnick. "So how are we going to do that?"

"I'd think a general agreement to not kill either her or Peeta would be a good place to start," Seeder points out dryly.

Johan nods, adding, "And then another agreement to keep her alive no matter what. Even if you have to sacrifice your life to do it."

"Easy for you to say," I snap, turning on him. "You get to sit up in the control room and watch, all cosy-like. You're not the one who'd have to."

"Don't pretend like you didn't know what you were getting into, Johanna," Haymitch interjects. "You're here, that mean you're ready to do what we need you to do. Now quit complaining."

"Doesn't mean I like it."

"Not my problem. Shut up if you've got nothing useful to say."

I back down, still scowling.

"Now," Haymitch carries on, "You have to keep Peeta alive. That's her condition. She thinks it's the boy we're trying to let win the Games, and we'd better keep it that way. She'll lose it if we don't."

Huh. Well, that's unexpected. Maybe there is something in the star crossed lovers story after all. Even so, that's not my problem. Keeping the two of them and myself alive is.

"I do think that we're all missing a point here, though," Seeder says. "Even if we keep both of them alive, that comes down to nothing if we're still in the Arena."

"Not to mention it'll probably be harder to do so the longer we stay in there," Finnick says.

"And the girl has no clue what we're doing," Haymitch reminds us. "It's the only way it'll work. But Katniss'll be more likely to run off on her own the longer you stay. She's not exactly eager for an alliance."

"That makes two of us," I mutter, and glare back at the round of stares from everyone else in the room. Even Finnick, annoyingly enough.

"As I was saying," Seeder continues. "We do need a way to get her – and the rest of us – out of the Arena."

"Which is why I'm here," Johan says.

Finnick snorts. "You? More like Nuts and Volts."

"No one asked for your opinion, District Four. Which is probably because it's never anything worth having."

"He has a point, Pyro," I say, for once actually being the voice of reason. Yes, I'm shocked too. "It's not like you're actually going into the Arena."

"No, but I'm representing District Three here, and we all know who's going to be doing the actual busting out."

"So how are you going to?" Seeder asks, obviously trying to get the conversation back on track.

"Well that depends on the exact circumstances of the Arena. But the three of us have been experimenting with various ways of getting through the force field that will obviously be at the edge of the Arena, and we're pretty sure it's doable. We've already contacted our man on the inside; Beetee and Wiress should have the main equipment they need in a way that shouldn't attract suspicion. Though of course, you all need to play your part to diffuse it."

"Pretty sure?" Finnick says. He doesn't sound convinced.

"Yeah, well it's not like we can build and test on a force field generator without generating suspicion," Johan snaps. "Pun not intended. In theory it should work."

"In theory? But what if it doesn't? We only get one shot at this, remember."

"Then you'll have to improvise. Don't complain, Odair. It's the best we can do."

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><p>I return back to level seven full of knowledge about the upcoming Games. On the minus side, my babysitting duty has been enlarged from one to four, with half of these people being completely oblivious to what I'm trying to do. On the slightly more positive end, I only have about half the contestants actively trying to kill me. And we have a secret code to arrange the timing of our escape. Not that I know exactly how we'll be able to tell the time in there, but at least a bit of a system to be able to communicate with the outside world is better than nothing.<p>

The apartment is empty when I arrive. Blue seems to have made good on his day off, and Blight's probably down in level five sharing one last drink with his buddy. As for the three Capitolians, good riddance is all I can say for their absence.

I do, however, find myself with a shortage of things to do, and when the others turn up a few hours later I'm actually happy to see them. Turns out that Blue actually spent his 'day off' dragging Blight down to the medical level where the doctors issued him with a cocktail of drugs used for ending addictions.

"Can't let the guy go into the Arena with withdrawal symptoms," he explains.

"I can actually think straight," Blight moans. "I don't like it."

He isn't cheered up remotely by the fact that Blue's also banned him from drinking from now until the Games. Neither am I, because he's decided that the rest of us can suffer in solidarity. Not that I drink much, but it's still nice to have the option open.

The three of us hang around and, without anything else to do, play a few games of cards. Eventually Blight, still in a bad mod from being sober, gets fed up with Blue's winning streak and storms off. With only two of us the game goes nowhere and soon I head off to bed.

No one mentions the interviews all evening.

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><p>As seems to be their habit, the Firekids are the last to arrive as we gather under the stage before the interviews. When everyone falls silent at their arrival I spin around from where I'm talking to Finnick and Mags fully prepared to snap at them from their arrogance. But the anger that fills me at the sight of them stems from an entirely different cause.<p>

They've put the star crossed lovers in their wedding clothes.

There's silence for a long time. I can't help but stare at the dress Everdeen is wearing; I'm far from the only one. Everyone seems to be thinking the exact same thing – if Snow hadn't gone far enough before, he definitely has now.

"I can't believe Cinna put you in that thing," Finnick says from beside me.

The Mockingjay immediately assumes it's a criticism of her precious stylist – as if – and goes on the defensive. "He didn't have any choice. President Snow made him."

Well we all figured that one out, brainless.

"Well, you look ridiculous!" Blondie snaps and pulls Gloss behind her to start our procession onto the stage. Her tone is indecipherable – a true daughter of District One. You can tell she's angry, but not why.

As I go to line up behind District Six I find myself straightening Everdeen's pearls. "Make him pay for it, okay?" I tell her, for once feeling something other than the usual hatred. Not even the Girl Who Won the Games Vince Lost deserves what Snow's doing to her now.

Once the interviews start it's plain that for once most of us are thinking with a single mind. This is our one chance to turn public support against the Quell. And as most of us have been condemned anyway – well, something that would otherwise be seen as rebellion doesn't seem anywhere near as risky anymore.

The de Montfort siblings, of all people, start it off by elaborating on how lovely all the Capitol people are and how sad it must be for them that so many of us will be lost. Volts wonders how legal the Quell actually is – surely experts need to fully examine it, don't they? For once the constant inability to finish sentences is on Wiress' side as she says what are almost truly provocative things and leads to audience right to drawing their own conclusions. Finnick plays up the womaniser angle to its full advantage.

Then it's my turn. I milk my acting talent to its limits in a performance to rival the one my first Games. Can't anything be done about the situation? I ask. Surely no one anticipated such a deep bond forming between the victors and the Capitol – and who'd be so cruel as to sever a bond like that?

Cecelia plays off both me and Blondie to portray us all – victors and Capitol alike - as being like one big family and sparks more tears as she uses her final seconds to say farewell to her children. Morgan Spike, whose music apparently has a moderate fanbase in the Capitol, speaks of work left unfinished and delayed weddings. Her male counterpart, Ando, follows right behind her with a speech about how he's so sorry everything people had been anticipating won't be able to come to pass. Seeder and Chaff have a powerful double message to give us – President Snow should be able to do something about the situation, right? So why doesn't he? Obviously he doesn't think it matters.

Now Everdeen steps up to the stage, but it takes almost all the full three minutes for the crowd to calm down for the hysterics we've managed to whip them into. She says a few token words about the cancelled wedding, and then begins to twirl in the heavy wedding dress.

And then she bursts into flame. She keeps spinning and spinning and spinning, looking exactly like the Girl on Fire she's always been. The smoke clears, and a mockingjay steps out.

For the first time I can remember, Katniss Everdeen looks like the true figurehead of the Rebellion.

Only that's not it, of course. She makes her way down to her seat in complete silence before Peeta takes the stage. I'm watching the audience so end up tuning out the actual conversation after a few seconds of burned poultry jokes, figuring that the mockingjay has to be the highlight of this evening.

The audience suddenly hushes and tenses, and I tune back in to hear an emphatic "I'm not glad," from Peeta.

I nudge Blight. "What are they on about?"

"They're married," he says flatly.

So Katniss and Peeta are already married? I don't know what to think. Sounds like an awfully convenient story, doesn't it? Only I don't see what purpose that story could actually serve.

"Surely even a brief time is better than no time," Caesar is saying.

Peeta is bitter. "Maybe I'd think that too, Caesar, if it weren't for the baby."

Oh, well done. Well, well done.

Though I really do hope it's just an act to ply the audience's sympathy and detonate the bomb of words we've all been building. Because if Katniss is pregnant, then I have one more body to look after in the Arena, and I had been counting on Everdeen's uncanny skill with a bow and arrow to help me out. But that doesn't matter yet. For now, I can just sit back and relax and watch the impact of a job well done.

As the anthem plays the twenty four of us begin to link hands. I'm not sure where it starts but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that for now, no matter what will happen tomorrow, the audience is getting a message that should stay with them for a while.

We are the victors. United we stand.


	10. Chapter 9

**As usual, thank you very much for reading and to everyone who left reviews – I don't always have the time to reply immediately, but they often make my day :)**

**To those of you who are reading Caisha's stuff – please, please, please go and nag at her to keep writing once she's done Freedom. This is my calling in the cavalry – I'm relying on you guys, for the sake of having **_**something**_** decent to read in the fandom. That and because she's my friend and I think she has far too much a talent to let go to waste.**

**And Briarpaw: I'm very much aware that it's kind of a rubbish argument. It is very much the point. All will be revealed… In the sequel, but all will be revealed ;)**

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><p>And that's when everything dissolves into chaos. The lights go out and we're left to stumble our way off the stage. Once backstage there's visibility but no less mayhem, as Peacekeepers pour in to keep order and Victors head every which way looking for people. I find Finnick in the chaos and we go to get into the nearest lift, already occupied by the Firekids, but a Peacekeeper blocks our way and we're forced to wait until the lift returns before we can get into it.<p>

"Guess I'll see you tomorrow," Finnick says.

"Yeah. If one of us doesn't get offed first."

The lift makes a sound to show us we've arrived on level four and the doors slide open. Finnick and I exchange a slightly awkward hug before he steps out and I'm left alone for the short ride up to my own floor.

Blight is already up there, but not Blue or any of the Capitolians. It's quite a long wait till someone else does turn up. Once Blue's arrived, though he explains that everyone who doesn't live out in the Districts has been sent home, and that the chaos we saw was nothing compared to what the mentors had to go through to get here.

"You guys have really psyched them up," he grins. "Now eat something and get off to bed the two of you. You have a big day tomorrow."

"Snow, Blue, you sound like a really psychotic version of my mother," mutters Blight, who's still sober and still hating it.

"I can't believe I'm agreeing with the second-rate drunkard," I say. "But I am. Stop it, Blue. You actually sound like you've lost your roots."

Nevertheless, Blue's suggestion has some merit so after dinner I head straight back to my room, where I take another very long shower. The Capitol showers aren't quite the same novelty they were six years ago but it's the last one I'll be having for quite a while, if ever. And I've always liked thinking in the shower. There's something quite soothing about the constant flow of warm water and knowing that you don't have to worry about it going cold or running out.

I sleep fitfully. We might have a plan, but it's not a particularly solid one. There's no guarantee that District Twelve will even agree to an alliance with us, let alone that we can get them past the crucial state of the bloodbath. Or Nuts or Volts, come to think of it, and we need at least one of them alive as well. And even if we can do all of that and somehow interpret the very dodgy signal, there's no guarantee that we'll be able to bust out of the Arena. This plan might be a bit more productive than blowing up par of the Capitol, but really not by much.

Eventually morning comes and I'm bundled out of bed and onto the roof by my stylist who's somehow managed to make it back across the city. It's still dark enough that the massive body of the hovercraft is barely visible, and the passenger area below it only visible due to light pouring out of it's many windows.

I'm raised up through the immobilising ladder and injected with the tracker – _the tracker_,how could we have forgotten that? Crap. Oh well, that should be dealable. Once the pain from the injection subsides I try to see if I can feel the chip through my skin, and I can. It'll be painful as Snow to cut it out, but now we know where it is it should be doable, if not pleasant at all.

I doze a bit on the hovercraft, somehow a bit more sleepy now that we're underway and I've already dealt with the first unexpected hurdle without much of a problem. Eventually we arrive at our destination and my stylist leads the way to my launch room.

I get given some food and my clothes for the Arena – a thin blue jumpsuit, a large thick shiny purple belt, and these weird rubbery shoes. Finally I get handed my token back, only this isn't the same ash J I used last time and brought along this time. This is a thin golden chain with a replica of the design from the famous mockingjay pin hanging from it.

Now how did someone manage to switch my token? We must have friends in high places. I don't say anything though. With a bit of luck it'll be recognised and give me insta ally rights. Pity I don't seem to be very good on the luck front, then. Still, better to have it than not. I'm sorry about losing that other token, though. It and me have been through a lot together.

I step onto the plate when ordered to but it takes a lot longer than I remember to rise up. Weird. I must just have a screwed up memory. Oh well. I put it out of my mind and focus on the next few minutes ahead of me.

When the darkness stops, I'm standing in the bright sunlight with an oddly reflective ground. The second my eyes clear up I realise why.

The Arena is filled with water.

Part of me grins at the symbolism – so they're trying to drown the Girl On Fire, are they? – while the rest scans my surroundings. My metal plate is completely surrounded with water, which is going to be bad for anyone who can't swim. Also known as most of us. But that also means there probably won't be mines.

Not like anyone's going to test that, of course. We've all been through one Hunger Games apiece, which means that we're all survivors and not particularly willing to risk our lives that stupidly. Bet that's what the people who designed this Arena were counting on.

The water area is divided into wedges by sandbars linking between the Cornucopia and a beach that seems to circle around all of us. In each wedge there're two tributes seemingly distributed randomly – on my left is Chaff, and on my right on the other side of a sandbar sits Wiress.

Well that makes my job easy.

The second the canon fires I dive into the water. I'm nowhere near Finnick-level at swimming, but the network of rivers and canals that flow through Seven means that anyone who works in the forests learns how to swim, if only because no one wants to try and clean body parts off the processors at the end of the Lower Dam. Maybe Rowan or Aaron with their mechanic upbringing wouldn't be able to cope at this, but I can, and Blight's forester features reassure me that he should be able too if he's thinking straight enough.

The swimming is actually a bit easier than it should be. I swallow enough of the water on my way to the sandbar to realise it's salt rather than the freshwater in the rivers back home. Maybe that's it, though I doubt it.

As I climb onto the sandbar I notice that the majority of tributes are still standing on their metal plates, although I spot Gloss de Montfort already climbing onto a sandbar a few spokes from me. I jump off into the other wedge but am only a few strokes into my swim to rescue Nuts when she jumps off her own plate and into the water.

I groan inwardly. What is she doing now? I doubt there's anywhere you can learn to swim in the factories of Three. That idiot is going to drown, and that'll be one ally down.

But miraculously, she doesn't. Somehow she's floating and slowly flailing her way towards me. I swim forward and grab her to speed her up, and between the two of us we manage to make it back to the sandbar.

"Are you actually crazy, Nuts?" I ask her, climbing on first and giving her a hand up. "You could have drowned."

She shakes her head absently and looks around. "I figured it out. The belts help you…"

Suddenly she tenses and points. "There."

I follow her hand and find her District Partner pulling himself onto a sandbar about three spokes over. He's coughing up water but obviously figured out the same thing Nuts did, whatever that was. The belts help you… Does that mean they're some type of floatation device?

He spots us and tries to signal something. Great. So now I get to lug along both of them, though I must admit it might be handy having Volts along to translate. Only instead of running down the spoke onto the beach, he turns around and heads towards the bloodbath at the Cornucopia. He's going to get himself killed. I though District Three were supposed to be _smart_.

"Stay on the beach," I snap at Wiress and sprint up my own sandbar. It's slow progress running on sand but I manage to get there a few seconds after Volts does, right in time to pull him out from under Gloss's sword.

"What do you think you're playing at," I hiss at him as I dodge Gloss' next sword stroke and scramble back towards the pile of weapons at the Cornucopia.

"I need wire," he says hurriedly and dives towards the pile as a knife flies narrowly over his head to embed itself in the golden metal of the Cornucopia.

Oh. That must be the 'equipment' Johan had mentioned. No wonder Volts, of all people, was so eager to run up here; he doesn't know if we'll ever get to visit again.

"Well hurry up and get it," I say, grabbing at the first weapon I reach – a knife – and using it to parry de Montfort. The impact of it jars through my wrist down my arm but I ignore the pain. I've had worse.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," he says from behind me. His voice is tense, as it rightly should be. Gloss is still mostly preoccupied with me and most of the others with their own fights but daggers are still flying towards us thanks to Enobaria, who seems to be multitasking battles.

"Well try faster," I snap. Another knife flies through the air and I pull him down for it to collide into the pile exactly where his head was a second ago.

"Got it!" The knife has started a small avalanche, releasing a spool of wire from the depths of the pile. Beetee grabs at it and runs back down the nearest unoccupied sandbar as I parry I final stroke.

"See you around, District One," I yell over my shoulder as the two of us sprint to the beach. Good thing I'm gloating, too, because turning around lets me see the knife that's heading straight for us. A parting shot. Crap.

I half roll half dive into the water, dragging Volts along with me. For a second I think we've made it, but then I see the water slowly turning red. Beetee's been hit.

I swim for the beach, pulling him along with me and trying not to swallow any of the bloody water. After what seems like an age we make it. I gently pull him to his feet, noticing that he still hasn't let go of that wire. Glad to see the guy has his priorities straight.

"You okay, Volts?"

His face is drawn and pale. Obviously he's in a lot of pain. Even so, he still manages to nod, grimacing as he does so.

"I should live. Probably."

"Can you walk by yourself?"

He tries it and immediately grabs at me for balance.

I sigh. "Obviously not."

The two of us stumble down the beach towards where I left Wiress. No more weapons are aimed our way; obviously everyone's too preoccupied with the bloodbath to bother us. A good thing, too. One more hit would probably finish Volts off and I dropped my knife when we splashed into the water.

Wiress isn't where I left her. What has she decided to do now?

"Johanna!"

I turn at the yell, instinctively reaching for a weapon before realising that I don't have one. Beetee slumps against me and hisses in pain. Maybe spinning that fast while still trying to support someone wasn't such a good idea.

Luckily for both of us, the voice was Blight. He's standing on the edge of the forest and beckoning us to go there too. Slowly we walk towards him – Volts' condition seems to have gone from bad to worse as a result of my spin.

"Little help, here?" I holler back.

Blight runs up and between the two of us we manage to haul Beetee to the treeline and start the climb up through the jungle.

"You seen Nuts?" I ask him.

"Yeah. Left her back a little ways into the woods. Think she figured it was safer there."

This is probably the most I've heard Blight talk. Looks like Blue's little anti-alcohol trick worked wonders. Which is good, because now I only have two and a half morons to babysit.

Nuts is sitting where Blight said she would be and jumps to her feet when she sees us approach. Slowly the four of us make our way a little further into the forest, with Wiress in the lead and Blight and I each supporting a side of Beetee. After maybe fifteen minutes we reach a place where the incline is slightly less steep and the jungle slightly less thick and Nuts suddenly stops.

"Put him…"

Blight and I exchange confused glances. Wiress sighs and points to the ground.

"I think she wants us to put him down," I say, so gently the two of us lay the barely-conscious Volts on the ground.

Wiress nods in satisfaction and gestures to his back where the knife is still sticking out of the wound. She thinks we're far enough to start looking after his health, I guess. Blight uses the knife to cut the arms and then further strips off his jumpsuit and the two of us bind the wound as best we can, which isn't very good considering neither of us have much of a clue as to what we're doing. The cut's deep but seems to have missed anything vital. By the time we're done it seems to be a passable effort if not brilliant first aid.

Afterwards we leave Beetee to recuperate for a few minutes while I scale a tree to try and find out what the Arena's like. The bloodbath is mostly over but a few crazy people still try to fight the four Careers spread out defensively around the Cornucopia. It's too far away to recognise anyone, but I doubt I'd be able to find the Firekids there anyway. Time for plan B.

"Did any of you happen to see Katniss or Peeta?" I say once I get down.

Blight shakes his head but Wiress nods.

"They went…" she manages before giving up on talking and pointing to our right.

"Okay," I say, as the only person capable of taking charge. "So that's where we go. Upwards and to the right. Everyone ready to go?"

Even Beetee manages a weak nod. The second the two of us raise him to his feet, though, he starts protesting for his wire, which we'd set aside to make dressing the wound easier.

"What's that?" Blight asks.

"The reason this moron got the knife in his back. Speaking of that knife, give it here. Someone who can actually use it without impaling themselves should carry it."

He pulls a face but gives me the knife without further argument. I shove it in my belt and we continue. Five minutes later the constant whipping of branches into my face makes me regret my decision.

"Nuts," I snap.

She turns around. "Yes?"

"Can you clear the branches out of the way? Use this, but be careful with it."

I hand the knife over and she nods. With Wiress clearing our way the going is slightly quicker, but not by much. Blight might be thinking clearer than he has in years, but that doesn't mean his body isn't experiencing the results of years of abuse and soon he can barely keep going by himself. This leaves me carrying Volts by myself, which slows us down significantly. Ironically Nuts is the quickest of us all, but even she feels the exertion of climbing such a steep slope in the never ending heat.

Soon we're all desperately thirsty. Nevertheless we all soldier on, because there's no obvious source of water yet. When Blight throws himself onto the ground and announces he can't go on anymore we still haven't found a source of water, so I order them to scream if anyone finds them and head off on my own to search.

I've left the three of them helpless and unarmed, though, so can't go far. Not when having at least Volts or possible Nuts alive is vital for my own safety. The search is futile and I return empty handed and desperately thirsty to find Blight slightly recovered and helping Nuts clear out a little patch of forest for the four of us.

It's as good a place to camp out as any and the sun looks quite close to setting. I don't protest, instead sitting down and leaning against a tree to await darkness and the death recap.

"Some water would be nice, Blue," I mutter.

No parachute.

"No, seriously, Blue-y, I'm sure we have enough sponsors to afford a measly bottle of water."

Still no parachute. I get the hint. Blue's telling me that we're not close enough to dying of dehydration for him to use up our precious sponsor money. Alright for him; he's not in this stupid Arena. Instead I try another tactic.

"Johan? Marchessa? Nuts and Volts – sorry, Beetee and Wiress – are here with us. They need water too. Why don't you send them any?"

Water is conspicuous only in its continued absence. I give up on that and search for food, very glad I bothered with the edible plants station. Unfortunately, the only nuts that seem to be in near constant supply are only edible when cooked, and there's no way I'm risking a fire with this lot to look after. Guess we'll be going hungry tonight.

Soon it goes dark, and then the sky is illuminated once more with the Capitol seal. The first face after the anthem is Blight's drinking buddy. I quickly glance over at him; his grief is plain on his face. Next is the male from Six – at least he was probably too out of it to feel it. Then old Woof and poor Cecelia with her children. Both from Nine. Morgan followed by Seeder for Ten and Eleven respectively.

More people I know dying. Not much of a big deal by now, but obviously it is for the others. Both Nuts and Volts have mournful looks on their faces though neither are actually crying. Then again, they've known many of these people for most of their lives.

Blight volunteers for first watch and I gratefully let him do so. Odds are I'll be awake for most of the night so a few hours sleep is welcomed. As I drift off I do the calculations for who remains besides us four. The de Montforts, Brutus, Enobaria. Finnick and Mags. Varia. The female morphling addict. Ando Torentsky. Chaff. Both Firekids. With the four of us added as well that's quite a lot alive for a first day.

I'm woken up by twelve tolls of a bell, as is everyone else. Blight and I take the opportunity to shift watches and then lightning starts quite close to us. It looks brutal, repeatedly slamming into trees. Wouldn't like to be caught in that, I think, but it doesn't come any closer. The lightning keeps going for an hour before it abruptly stops and heavy rain starts up over us.

Finally, some water! I close my eyes so not to fill them with water and tilt my head upwards. An awful metallic taste immediately fills my mouth and I spit it out and open my eyes. I'm presented with a forest already turning a uniform shade of red.

This rain isn't water. It's blood.


	11. Chapter 10

**Any dialogue you recognise probably isn't mine. Not much else to say really, other than that I hope you're still continuing to enjoy reading the story.  
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><p>Wiress screams. It's a long, piercing yell that goes on and on without stopping. Until I dive over and slap my hand over her mouth, anyway. Nuts keeps yelling, but at least she's muffled. Less easy for anyone to find us.<p>

Though I doubt that anyone caught in this is going to want to kill harmless little us, not as long as they're still in this awful bloody rain. Still, better safe than sorry.

The one good thing about the screaming is that it's woken the guys up. I can barely see them, though, and somehow I get the feeling that this'll only get worse.

Blight panics immediately and starts blundering around, trying to get out. Not that I can blame him; no clue how I'm holding it together myself, really. Probably 'cause I'm the only one in any fit shape to take charge here.

"Stay still!" I snap at him, keeping my head angled towards the ground so that as little of the blood gets into my mouth as possible. Even so, enough gets in to make me almost gag. I spit it out it disgust.

Somehow he listens to me, and helps me get Beetee – "I'm awake, though I wish I wasn't" - up and in a position to lean onto my shoulders. The second we're ready to leave, though, Blight runs off ahead expecting us to follow. We do, but only because we want to get out of here about as much as he does.

Even so, I still have to yell at him to stay close, because I can barely see him through the red and black of the rainy night. Wiress has stopped screaming, finally, and follows right behind me mumbling to herself. Blight slows down but still seems impatient at the speed we're moving at, even if it's still faster than would be a good idea usually – we keep stumbling over tree roots, and Beetee gasps in pain beside me.

We don't talk anymore than absolutely necessary, if only because we can't without getting a mouthful of the hot blood. It splatters against our skin and I try not to think about what it is, because if the knowledge hits me properly I'll probably panic just as much as Blight. That would be, very bad. So I must not panic. I count my steps and focus on the feel of Volts leaning on me and try not to think of anything else. I close my eyes to help shut reality out. It's not like keeping them open will help.

After what seems like an eternity of this scene out of some twisted horror movie there's a flash of light that pierces through my closed eyes, and an accompanying cannon blast. That was way too close for comfort, we'd better turn around, because whatever that was could be coming for us next. I can feel Beetee from where I'm half carrying him and can hear Wiress' continuous mumbling of some stupid children's song like it's the one thing that will help her to survive.

There's another flash, but no cannon. We'd better get out of here now.

"Blight?" I call out. "Come on, we're turning around."

Silence.

"Blight?"

Nothing.

"Blight?" I yell the last one, unable to help myself.

Still nothing. I let go of Beetee to run forward, to try and help him somehow, to find whatever it was who killed him. But Volts refuses to let go of me. I try to shake loose but he keeps holding on, with a surprisingly strong grip considering.

"Don't, Johanna…" he says so softly I can barely hear him. "Force field."

He bends down with another gasp of pain and then straightens up, pressing something into my hand.

"Throw…"

I do, and there's another flash of light. Force field, then. Bad idea to move anywhere if we don't want to get fried.

So we don't. The three of us huddle together for what seems like eternity but can't be more than an hour. Keeping our heads down, keeping in one spot for fear of blundering into a force field, trying not to breathe or swallow or think about the blood rain. Listening to Nut's endless chants of "tick, tock. Tick, tock" until I think that if this doesn't end soon she won't be the only one going insane.

But eventually, finally, _finally_, it's over. We don't move for a while after the rain stops, almost unable to believe it. But after a few minutes I pull myself to my feet and help Beetee up. Wiress, who still won't stop chanting, follows suit and the three of us stand there, assessing the situation.

We look like there's been an explosion at the painting factory back in Seven. There isn't a bit of Wiress, who I can see properly, that isn't caked with blood, and I bet Beetee and I look exactly the same. I certainly feel like it.

Neither of the others is in any condition to discuss plans so I decide to head down to the beach where we can at least wash the blood off. It's not exactly a fast trip. Nuts seems to be in some kind of shock and can't walk straight, while Volts's condition has worsened quite a bit from the stumble in the blood rain. He doesn't complain much, but our pauses to rest become more and more frequent. I start to wonder what we're going to end up doing once we get down to the beach. I mean, the odds of finding more allies are incredibly tiny.

Slowly Beetee has to lean on me more and more, and I realise why I decided to head to the beach – at least this walk is downhill. When we finally hit the beach he completely collapses into me, perhaps sensing we've arrived at a destination. How am I supposed to cope with this any longer?

Wiress careers into me and I shove her over in frustration, completely fed up with the situation. Seriously, who decided I get to babysit these two?

"Johanna!"

I turn around at the yell and grin when I see Finnick, covered in some kind of lumpy green sludge but still recognisably him, run over. Behind him are two similarly green figures who I think are the firekids. Well, about time.

"Finnick!" I yell back, because it is _good_ to see someone else who isn't out of it in one way or another.

"What's with the red?" Finnick asks once he gets over.

I pull a face. "You don't want to know."

Over the next few minutes I give Finnick the shortened version of what's happened to me ever since the Games started. By the time I'm done telling him his two companions have come over. From this close there's no mistaking it; he's picked up the Firekids. That makes my life easier.

"I'm sorry, Johanna," he says once I've told him how Blight died.

I shrug. "Yeah, well, he wasn't much, but he was from home. And he left me alone with these two."

For Peeta and Firegirl's benefit I repeat what happened to Beetee.

"And her," I say, looking at Wiress, who obligingly mumbles her new catchphrase. "Yeah, we know. Tick, tock. Nuts is in shock." The woman in question chooses this moment to walk into me again. I shove her to the ground again – not like the sand can hurt her, and it might snap some sense back into her. "Just stay down, will you?"

"Lay off her," Everdeen snaps, choosing this moment to speak up. Because she's the moral heroine who can do no wrong.

I slap her. It's the most satisfying thing I've done in ages.

"Lay off her? Who do you think got them out of that bleeding jungle for you? You Snow-endorsed piece of filth! You-"

Finnick picks me up at that point and carries me over to the water while I keep screaming all the obscenities I've been thinking since she won Vince's Games at her. Even when he dunks me in the salt I keep yelling until he gives up and just holds me under till I struggle for breath.

"Promise you'll stop yelling?" he asks me when he finally lets me up.

I nod, gasping for breath.

"You sure?"

"Yes," I manage to get out.

He seems satisfied. "Probably best for the two of us to stay here for a while though, give you time to cool off." He grins, raises his voice half an octave to mimic the Capitol accent. "And to get that blood off you. You look simply atrocious. I hate to think what it's doing to your pores."

I can't help laughing. "Like you look any better, Odair."

"Why, of course I do. Never looked any prettier in my life."

He pulls some atrociously overdone pose made even more ridiculous by the condition of his skin and we both crack up. I know he's deliberately trying to get me to forget about the anger so that this alliance can stay in one piece until the rescue but that doesn't matter. The banter is real enough, as is the not-quite-friendship behind it.

Finnick and I hang around the edge of the sea, talking and laughing while I scrub every last bit of the blood off me and the Firekids tend to District Three further down the beach at their camp. I don't ask Finnick about what happened to the three of them and he doesn't volunteer the story; I resolve to ask Peeta if no one tells me soon.

After I've cooled off a bit and gotten rid of the blood the two of us head towards the others, where I help myself to a large quantity of their water with the assurance that this is from the Arena rather than sponsorship water; I've mentored often enough to know that they never sell water in woven baskets. Once I've drowned my thirst I start on the pile of shelfish they've gathered as Finnick finally tells the three of us their story of the Arena.

Turns out that there were four of them leaving the Cornucopia; the Firekids, Finnick and Mags. They evidently moved way faster than we did because Peeta hit the force field when it was still light. Finnick managed to revive him – and if Blight was anyone else I'd be reflecting on how once again Katniss gets the easier half of a life far too similar to mine for comfort – and so they moved on.

It doesn't sound like Finnick who's telling the story. His voice is cold and detached, his face expressionless. And I notice he stays as far away from details as he possibly can.

They heard the same sound just before the lightning that we did, and a few hours later – "once the rain stopped," Katniss interjects – they encountered fog which caused them to blister and their muscles to stop working. Somehow they helped each other outrun the fog and found the beach again, where they stayed for some hours. Then at one point Peeta went in to the forest to get water using a spile they got sent and he ended up getting attacked by monkey mutations, but ended up getting out of there in one piece when one of the Victors from Six ended up distracting the monkeys.

"And then we found you," Finnick concludes. He gives an exaggerated yawn. "I don't know about you, but I'm really tired."

"I'll take watch," I offer. There are some holes in his story which show me he's avoiding mentioning at least one key thing, but I don't push him. I'll get the information off Peeta instead.

Katniss looks at me suspiciously and volunteers to keep watch with me. "In case one of us drifts off or something."

I don't believe her for a second; she's just joining me because she doesn't trust me not to stab her in her sleep. Which is fair enough, I suppose, because if it weren't for this stupid plot I've gotten myself involved in I probably would. Nevertheless I don't say anything – what's it to me what she does? And it lets me make sure the Firekids don't run away ahead of time.

We sit in slightly tense silence until the deep steady breathing of the others reassures me that they're all asleep.

"How'd you lose Mags?" I ask, mostly because the silence is driving me crazier than Wiress and because I might not get a chance to ask without Finnick hearing for a while.

Katniss pauses before answering. "In the fog. Finnick had Peeta. I had Mags for a while. Then I couldn't lift her. Finnick said he couldn't take them both. She kissed him and walked right into the poison."

Two deaths already, then, three if you count Blight, just to protect two kids with no idea of the consequences of their actions. Three deaths, two of whom I knew personally, and, in Mags' case, happened to like. And the Girl Who Was On Snow-Endorsed Fire is just sitting here, still completely freaking clueless.

I resist the urge to punch something and instead try to cram as much accusation into my voice as I say, "She was Finnick's mentor, you know."

"No, I didn't."

And that's the problem, isn't it? You didn't know, and so you got a bunch of people killed to protect your own moronic backside. Still, the genuine sorrow in Everdeen's voice takes a bit of the venom out of my thoughts. She didn't know, and she's too dense to realise, but she still didn't know. It's not like she got them all killed on purpose.

"She was half his family," I tell her.

Everdeen has nothing to say to that. Which is probably good, because anything she says would probably spark me off again. We sit in not quite comfortable silence for a bit longer.

"So what were you doing with Nuts and Volts?" she asks me, breaking the silence.

I think fast. "I told you – I got them for you. Haymitch said if we were to be allies I had to bring them to you. That's what you told him, right?"

True enough – I did get them for her, just not for the same reason she thinks. And it's a relatively plausible excuse, especially with how different these Games are. For yet another of countless times I thank my genetics for making me such a good liar.

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

Somehow I doubt she does, ignorant kid that she is. She has no clue of the true value of the two of them, and any soft spots she has towards them must be completely overruled by the fact that this is the Hunger Games and any extra allies make it more difficult for her to get out alive. So I glare at her, because there's so much she doesn't _know_ and it'd be so much easier to hate her if she did.

"I hope so."

This time the silence is interrupted by more of Nut's insistent "tick, tock"ing.

"Oh goody, she's back," I say, getting up and moving to fling myself onto the sand on the far side of Finnick. "Okay, I'm going to sleep. You and Nuts can guard together."

The next thing I'm conscious of is being shaken awake by the Firegirl.

"Get up. Get up – we have to move."


	12. Chapter 11

**As per usual for this section, a lot (but not all) of the dialogue is stolen from Catching Fire. So if you recognise it, Suzanne Collins probably wrote it first.**

**On a more personal note, don't expect much in the way of quick replies – I've got Finals, and other stuff. I should be able to stick to once a fortnight updates though. But thank you to everyone who does take a little time to review – it always means a lot.**

**But I digress. On with the fic.**

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><p>I struggle to my feet, still a little groggy. Bad Johanna. Years of luxury have made me lose the ability to wake up instantaneously. And to think I call myself a morning person.<p>

"What is it?" Finnick asks, much more nicely than I think he should.

"We're all in danger," Everdeen tells us with a surprising lack of melodrama, moving to wake Peeta. "We have to move."

I roll my eyes. "I heard that the first time, Firegirl. Be a dear and be more specific, won't you?"

She sighs impatiently but does slow down her frantic motions to explain whatever's gotten her so bothered.

"Wiress figured it out. It's a clock – I mean, the Arena is. Twelve segments, split up by those banks of sand in the middle. And at a certain hour of the day, in order, something triggers a trap in each of them. Listen."

We do.

"I don't hear anything," Peeta says. I agree with him, but obviously some of the others think otherwise.

"I do," Finnick says softly. "It's raining."

A chill goes down my spine and I look up at the sky. The sun's quite high – it's only an hour or so past noon. Maybe there's something in Everdeen's half baked theory after all. Or maybe not. After all, it is the Girl on Fire we're talking about – she's got to get an award for achievements in ignorance somewhere.

"Exactly," Everdeen says. "It's raining. And about an hour earlier, there were twelve bongs and a lightning strike. And I'd bet almost anything that soon there's going to be fog in that segment over there."

She points at the one directly to the left – to the one directly anticlockwise – of us.

"And then those monkeys here an hour later," whispers Peeta.

Her expression softens as she looks at him. Just for a split second, but it's enough to make me almost start believing those lies of theirs. Almost.

"Right. Only we don't know how far they're willing to go, or how far that fog spreads. We're way too close for my liking."

Peeta nods agreement, and after thinking about it for a few seconds Finnick does too. They all look at me expectantly.

"I think you're as nutty as Nuts," I tell Everdeen flatly. "Why'd the Gamemakers bother making a trap that we can figure out that easily, especially when they're sending in people who've been known to use the Arena against their enemies before? Not when it's much more exiting watching us run around in total cluelessness."

"But what've you got to lose?" Peeta asks me.

"And if she is right then we've just saved our guts," adds Finnick.

So now they're all ganging up on me. Typical. I shrug, sensing the battle's lost and that I still need to stay their ally.

"Ok, fine. But don't come crying to me if we end up walking into another trap."

As Everdeen wakes Nuts up the rest of us unpack the small camp. Neither takes long and all we have left to do is pick up the still semi-catatonic Volts and leave. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to want to comply, struggling and muttering about his wire which leaves poor Peeta think he's talking about Wiress.

I cross over to the two of them and pick up the wire. "Oh, I know what he wants. This worthless thing. It's some kind of wire or something. That's how he got cut. Running up to the Cornucopia to get this." Then, realising that Beetee's attachment to the object, justified as it is, could cause quite a bit of suspicion back in the Capitol, I lie fluently. "I don't know what kind of weapon it's supposed to be. I guess you could pull off a piece and use it as a garrotte or something. But really, can you imagine Beetee garrotting somebody?"

"He won his Games with wire. Setting up that electrical trap. It's the best weapon he could have," Peeta points out.

Interesting. So the Firekids have been studying their potential enemies. Maybe they're not as useless as I thought. Though it was probably Haymitch's idea.

Everdeen narrows her eyes at me. "Seems like you'd have figured that out. Since you nicknamed him Volts and all."

I glare back, suddenly angered again. Can't she take a hint and stay silent? "Yeah, that was really stupid of me, wasn't it? I guess I must have been distracted by keeping your little friends alive. While you were… what, again? Getting Mags killed off?"

She tenses and I notice her hand going to her belt. Internally I allow a little glow of satisfaction. That hit the target. I know I should leave it there, but I can't resist a little extra goading.

"Go ahead. Try it. I don't care if you are knocked up. I'll rip your throat out."

Everdeen looks positively furious. The citizens of the Capitol are only spared the sight of an actual fight by Finnick stepping in.

"Maybe we had all better be careful where we step. There's your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it."

Beetee grabs the wire and clutches it carefully to his chest. Peeta takes the opportunity to lift up the now unresisting man and asks us where we're headed.

"I'd like to go to the Cornucopia and watch," Finnick says. "Just to make sure we're right about the clock."

So the lot of us make the short walk over the nearest sandbar towards the Cornucopia. Once there, Nuts sets to work cleaning Beetee's wire, singing that song from earlier about the mouse and the clock. I make some comment of annoyance, but no one else pays it any attention.

Suddenly she stands straight and points to the jungle. "Two."

"Yes, look, Wiress is right," Everdeen says. "It's two o'clock and the fog has started."

"Like clockwork. You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress."

Beetee barely reacts visibly to Peeta's patronising tone but irritation tinges his voice. "Oh, she's more than smart. She's intuitive." We all turn to him. "She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines." This last part is obviously addressed to the two from Twelve.

"What's that?" Finnick asks.

The Girl on Fire is the one to reply to him. "It's a bird we take down into the mines to warn us if there's bad air."

"What's it do, die?"

"It stops singing first. That's when you should get out. But if the air's too bad, it dies, yes." Everdeen gives me a look of some annoyance, like I shouldn't be treating the topic so flippantly. "And so do you."

"Good thing you're not in a mine then, eh Johanna," Finnick says, grinning.

"Better for you," I retort. "In the darkness no one would be able to see how pretty you are."

He fakes a shiver of fear. "Oh no. How could my ego cope?"

"I think the more important question is how it could fit into a mine shaft in the first place."

"You wound me, Johanna. You really do."

"Oh, poor wittle Finny…"

He punches me softly in the arm. "Shut up."

I notice that Everdeen's wandered away from us towards the Cornucopia. She does have a point, I realise – I need some proper weapons, badly. Telling Finnick so, I make my own way towards the abandoned pile of weaponry and dig carefully through it till I find some weapons. My search yields two elaborately etched axes, complete with customised holders to let me get hold of them in a hurry. Perfect.

Taking a few steps back from the Cornucopia I strap one on and let the not quite sheath of the other fall to the sand as I take a few experimental swings. The weight feels good. The blade is razor sharp too, I realise, drawing a hair across it and watching how easily it cuts. Now to find out how durable the thing is, and if I can use it for throwing as well as in close combat. The axe leaves my hand and lands blade-first into the Cornucopia. It sticks there, held in place by the softened gold in the noon heat. Sweet. I now have weapons.

As I continue to experiment with my newly acquired weaponry the Firekids talk about some kind of map Peeta's been drawing on a leaf and Finnick decides to go for a swim. I sit on the edge of the almost island with one axe across my lap and my feet cooling in the water and talk to him whenever he comes up for air. It's an almost idyllic scene – well, if you ignore the various weaponry, Nuts' mutterings and Volts trying not to die in a corner.

"Come on, lets go look at what the others are doing," Finnick says, deftly pulling himself up out of the water beside me. I only put up a token protest and follow him.

Turns out Peeta really is drawing a map – of the Arena. He's marked off all the segments he and Everdeen know about and labelled them with those fancy numerals you get on clocks sometimes.

"Did you notice anything unusual in the others?" Everdeen asks Beetee and me.

We shake our heads. Volts, I notice, seems to be recovering.

Firegirl is slightly crestfallen. "I guess they could hold anything."

"I'm going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers' weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we'll stay clear of those," Peeta says, businesslike. "Well, it's a lot more than we knew this morning, anyway."

He's barely finished speaking when Katniss spins around, pulling at her bow and releasing a shot. Without any conscious thought I follow suit and fling the axe that was hanging at my side into the chest of the enemy. It's only even after that axe has left my hand and I'm reaching for the second that I even register who and what has happened.

Gloss de Montfort has slit Wiress' throat, and she falls out of his grip as Katniss' arrow hits his head. His sister was the one who now bears my axe instead of a heart. Not that she had one in the first place, mind.

Finnick pushes Peeta out of the way of what would otherwise surely be a direct kill by Brutus' spear but ends up with a knife in the thigh for his troubles, courtesy of Enobaria. As three canon shots fire District Two seem to realise how badly outnumbered they are and flee back down the nearest sandbar.

Axe in hand, I start to give chase, Katniss right next to me and Finnick limping only a pace behind us, adrenaline keeping him going despite the pain he must be experiencing. Just as I turn my head back to yell at Peeta to stay where he is and look after Beetee, the Cornucopia starts to spin.

It's a nauseating sensation. I drop to the ground and spread my body, clinging to the sand with hands and feet and every muscle I posses, the axe somehow staying in my grip. We spin for what feels like forever but can't obviously be that long. Finally it stops and I sit up.

Bad idea. I flop back to the ground and do a quick head count. Me, Finnick, Peeta, Kat – Everdeen.

"Where's Volts?" I ask, feeling a bit more able to sit up stably and doing so.

We all look around. Peeta is the first to point, but I notice he keeps his mouth resolutely shut. The man from Three is out in the water and barely managing to keep afloat even with his belt on. Finnick rolls more than dives into the water and rapidly swims out to grab him.

Without warning, Everdeen snaps something that sounds like "cover me" and leaps into the water, swimming towards Wiress' body.

"What's that idiot doing?" I ask the general vicinity.

Peeta says shakily, "I think she's fetching Volts' wire. Wiress was washing it when…"

He slowly lowers himself onto his back and closes his eyes. "And I'm just going to try and not be sick, if you don't mind."

I climb to my feet and take a few steps away from him, keeping my eyes on Everdeen. She did say to cover her, after all. As the Girl on Fire paddles towards the body the familiar hovercraft appears and slowly lowers itself downwards. They both arrive at about the same time but as Wiress' body is lifted up Everdeen heads towards us. Once slightly further away from the hovercraft she raises her hand triumphantly, letting me as well as a just returned Finnick and Beetee see the metallic glint in her hand.

Between his coughs I hear Beetee give a barely audible sigh of relief. As Everdeen returns to the Cornucopia island he jams his glasses back onto his face and hacks out his last mouthful of water. The wire is returned to his hands and he unravels a bit, running it through his fingers. For the first time I notice how thin the wire is; it resembles human hair more than anything else.

We stay in silence on the island for a bit. The Firekids embrace, Finnick and I sit side by side leaning against the metal of the Cornucopia, and Beetee sits on the edge of the sand a bit away from the rest of us fiddling with his wire and staring into the ocean where Wiress' body was lifted up by hovercraft.

Eventually I can't take any more of this solemn inaction. "Let's get off this stinking island."

As Finnick pulls off his undershirt – to the cheers of people throughout Panem, undoubtedly – and wraps it around his wound, Volts decides that he can probably walk and is helped up by Everdeen.

"Where too?" Peeta asks.

Finnick looks up at the sun. "It's only a few hours past twelve. Let's head to the twelve o'clock beach – we'll have quite a while there before we have to move."

No one has a better suggestion, so I head off down the strip nearest to me. Partway down it I look around to notice that everyone's headed off in different directions.

"Twelve o'clock, right?" says Peeta. "The tail points at twelve."

Finnick shakes his head. "Before they spun us. I was judging by the sun."

"The sun only tells you it's going on four, Finnick," Everdeen tells him.

Beetee nods, and says, "I think Katniss's point is, knowing the time doesn't mean you necessarily know where four is on the clock. You might have a general idea of the direction. Unless you consider that they may have shifted the outer ring of the jungle as well."

Everdeen nods agreement. "Yes, so any one of these paths could lead to twelve o'clock."

We all gather around the Cornucopia and try to come up with another plan.

"Why don't we follow District Two?" I ask. "Get rid of them, while we're at it."

We quickly scan all the spokes, but whatever tracks they left have been blown away. Well, there goes that plan.

"I should never have mentioned the clock," Everdeen says despondently. "Now they've taken that advantage away as well."

"Only temporarily," Beetee points out. "At ten, we'll see the wave again and be back on track."

"Yes, they can't redesign the whole Arena," adds Peeta.

She still doesn't look convinced. Stupid. It doesn't matter about the Gamemakers – we'd be dead if it weren't for her actions, whether or not I like to admit it.

"It doesn't matter. You had to tell us or we never would have moved our camp in the first place, brainless," I snap and change the subject before anyone notices my half-compliment. "Come on, I need water. Anyone have a good gut feeling?"

Finnick points down the closest spoke to him. "This seems as good as any."

"So come on," I say. "Let's go."

We walk down the sandbar and head to where the beach turns into the forest. None of us go in, though; instead we peer in, checking for obvious traps.

At last Peeta says, "Well, it must be monkey hour. And I don't see any of them in there. I'm going to try to tap a tree."

"No, it's my turn," Finnick says.

I can see what he's doing. Everdeen can handle herself, she proved that earlier. Peeta… can't. And Haymitch told us that she's doing everything she can to keep him alive, so if we want her we need him too. So we need to try and keep him out here, without any traps.

"I'll at least watch your back."

"Katniss can do that," I tell him. "We need you to make another map. The other washed away."

I take a leaf off the nearest tree and hand it over as Everdeen reluctantly follows Finnick into the forest. I look over Peeta's shoulder as another map of the Arena begins to take shape and keep alert in case of another attack. Beetee sits down on the sand and continues to fiddle with the wire, withdrawn into his own head.

And then we hear Katniss scream her sister's name.


	13. Chapter 12

**Once again, thanks for everyone reading and reviewing. It always makes my day to learn that you guys are out there :)**

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><p>Peeta leaps to his feet and makes a mad dash into the forest. I reach out to try and restrain him but he pulls away from me and runs on. Evidently his mind's on one thing only. And then he runs into an invisible barrier. He spends a good few minutes screaming obscenities and trying to break through the wall before finally giving up in frustration and kicking it one final time.<p>

"Why don't you try going around it?" Beetee suggests, coming up behind us.

"Don't bother," I say. "I bet you the entire wedge'll be sealed off."

Peeta sighs and collapses to the ground in defeat. "You're probably right. I just hope she's okay."

And Finnick, I think. Don't forget Finnick. He's in there too, remember.

Instead I ask Beetee, "Do you know what this is?"

He reaches out to touch the barrier. "Not a force field. I'd say some form of mechanised super strong plastic. There's probably an invisible seam in the forest floor here that raises the barrier once someone's wandered into the trap."

"Can you please be quiet?" Peeta asks him through gritted teeth. He doesn't say it, but there's quite a large implication in his tone of 'how can you be so calm at a time like this?'

Beetee shrugs and says nothing more, and with nothing else to do the three of us settle down to wait. Eventually Finnick and Everdeen arrive and, like Peeta, run straight into the invisible wall. They seem to be physically unharmed but in psychological agony, and soon I can see why. Jabberjays are following them and they flock in larger and larger numbers, screaming something. No sound comes through the wall but whatever it is they're yelling seems to be affecting them quite badly.

Tears stream down both their faces and as Katniss raises her hand against the glass to meet Peeta's like it's a lifeline, Finnick curls into a ball with his hands over his head. Soon she has to follow suit but she keeps her eyes locked with Peeta's the whole time.

After a bit less than an hour of whatever it is they're going through the barrier finally lifts and Katniss tumbles into Peeta's lap. Beetee and I leave the two of them to have a moment alone and walk over to Finnick who's still curled up.

"They were screaming," he tells us, voice shaking but blank. "The birds. Only they weren't birds, they were Annie. Mostly her. There were others from home but mostly her."

"It's okay," I tell him, trying to be reassuring. "They've stopped now. You're okay now."

He shoves me away. "But how do you think they got her to scream?" The words come out as a hoarse yell. The two lovers ignore it, somehow.

I don't have much to say to that, but I try anyway. "She can't be dead."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because if she's dead they stop being able to use her," I say flatly.

He doesn't seem very reassured. "There are much worse things than death, Johanna." He starts shivering, caught in some private memory.

Over with Everdeen, Peeta raises his voice. "Katniss, Prim isn't dead. How could they kill Prim? We're almost down to the final eight of us. And what happens then?"

"Seven more of us die," she replies. I could laugh at that, if it wasn't for the situation.

"No, back home. What happens when they reach the final eight tributes in the Games? What happens? At the final eight?"

"At the final eight? They interview your family and friends back home."

Finnick sits up and starts listening. Good. At least someone's able to reassure him.

"That's right," Peeta says patiently. "They interview your family and friends. And can they do that if they've killed them all?"

"No?"

"No. That's how we know Prim's alive. She'll be the first one they interview, won't she? First Prim. Then your mother. Your cousin, Gale. Madge. It was a trick, Katniss. A horrible one. But we're the only ones who can be hurt by it. We're the ones in the Games. Not them."

"You really believe that?" There's a tinge of hope in her voice, now.

"I really do."

She looks at us. "Do you believe it, Finnick?"

"It could be true," he says, hopeful but unwilling to believe it quite yet. "I don't know. Could they do that, Beetee? Take someone's regular voice and make it…"

Beetee nods. "Oh, yes. It's not even that difficult, Finnick. Our children learn a similar technique in school."

And you've been using it for years to avoid the Capitol's surveillance systems, I think, remembering what Johan had said during that meeting in the catacombs. Strange to think that that was only a few days ago.

"Of course Peeta's right," I say, voice flat. "The whole country adores Katniss' little sister. If they really killed her like this, they'd probably have an uprising on their hands." On a sudden impulse, I throw back my head and raise my voice. "Whole country in rebellion? Wouldn't want anything like that!"

Everdeen looks shocked and I allow myself an internal smirk of satisfaction. I bet Snow heard that. I hope he did, anyway.

I need to get away from here and be on my own for a bit. And I'm still thirsty. "I'm getting water."

Firegirl grabs my hand. "Don't go in there. The birds-"

I shake it free and glare at her for presuming to tell me what to do. "They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love."

Before I see the inevitable pity on her face I grab the water container and walk, quickly but not at a run, into the forest. Why in Panem did I bother telling Everdeen, a girl I hardly know and barely tolerate, something like that. On national television, even. My past is none of anyone's business, let alone hers.

I make sure to take a long time with the water. On the way back I notice one of Everdeen's arrows on the ground, so I spend some time gathering as many of them as I can find. The more time I have to myself the better.

Despite my best efforts, my thoughts keep wandering to places I don't want them. Saying that to Everdeen – the sheer _stupidity_ of revealing something that private to her, of all people – has opened the lock to the memories I usually keep repressed. I think of Vince, mostly, and the way Snow snatched him away from me. Rowan and our Games. Aunt Aspen, like a surrogate mother to me, and then my real mother, dead in childbirth. Then my father, killed by peacekeepers nine months before that, and Ash, who got mixed up in the wrong crowd in an attempt to get us extra cash.

Everyone dead in Seven these past few months crosses my mind, too. Snow, and everything he stands for, have ended up killing them all, just as his laws indirectly lead to the death of most of my family. Just as his little business venture ended up getting Vince killed. Blight and Willow, both dead too. When I won my Games there were six of us Victors. Now there are three. And then Aaron and his family, killed in the mill because of Snow.

So I gather water, gather arrows and fume silently until I'm as under control as I can get. When I return Finnick's gone swimming and the two from Twelve are sitting together and talking. Beetee sits at a slight distance from the rest of us, still fiddling vacantly with his wire. He seems to want to be alone so I go and join Finnick in the water.

Only a few minutes later the cannon fires, bringing us all together to the beach reaching for our weapons in case the danger's close. Instead the hovercraft goes into the six-to-seven zone and goes down five different times to retrieve bits of the body. We all decide then and there to give that place a wide berth.

Over the next few hours Peeta makes a new map, Finnick weaves a basket and nets and then goes fishing and I try to be useful somehow. We're just about to start our dinner of fish and shellfish when the anthem begins.

A massive list of faces begins. Cashmere and Gloss de Montfort. Wiress. I quickly glance at Beetee but his face is perfectly calm. Too calm – the guy must have iron self control. Mags, and I don't have to look at Finnick to see how he'll react. Varia. The female morphling from six. Blight, and even I can't help but feel a twinge of sadness. Ando from Ten.

Eight gone in one night. Again.

"They're really burning through us," I comment.

"Who's left?" asks Finnick, after a slightly awkward silence. "Besides us five and District Two?"

"Chaff," says Peeta instantly. At least someone's been doing the mental maths.

He's only just finished speaking when a parachute floats down and lands next to us. Finnick, who's closest, rips it open to reveal a bunch of small square rolls.

"These are from your District, right, Beetee?" Peeta asks.

"Yes, from District Three," Beetee replies, somewhat unnecessarily. It's not like we don't know where he's from. "How many are there?"

"Twenty-four," says Finnick, who has been counting them while the others spoke.

"An even two dozen, then?" clarifies Beetee.

"Twenty-four on the nose," Finnick confirms. "How should we divide them?"

"Let's each have three, and whoever is still alive at breakfast can take a vote on the rest," I say, taking Finnick's hint and distracting from the obviously odd words of the other two. Looks like against all odds the signal's working; we're getting out of here tomorrow at midnight. If all goes to plan, that it.

Everdeen laughs at my comment. I feel strangely pleased.

After finishing dinner we move to the ten to eleven section and decide to camp there. We hear an unpleasant clicking, like insects, from the next section over but no one can see anything and we all stay well clear. The Firekids offer to take first watch and we agree, somewhat reluctantly; no one wants them to run off in the night yet we can't be too obvious with splitting them up.

"I'll take second," Beetee offers.

"But you're still injured," says Katniss, who seems to have stepped into the role of not quite willing medic. "You need your rest."

"And the rest of you have been doing much more than I have. Get a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep. It will do you more good than it would I."

When someone else continues to protest he gives us all a look almost scarily reminiscent of one used by a stern teacher. "I'm not entirely helpless, you know."

The others utter a few more token protests, but he stands firm. "It's high time I did something useful around here anyway. Wake me up when your watch is over."

"But don't you want someone else to keep watch with you?"

He shakes his head. "I'll be fine. And so will you, don't worry; the others are going to want to wait a bit before trying to take on a group as large as ours anyway."

And Chaff should be on our side, I think, which means that there's only District Two. Enobaria, at least, is smarter than that.

After extracting a promise from District Twelve to wake him when their watch is over, Beetee lies down on the sand and tries to go to sleep. Finnick and I do likewise and soon I drift off.

I'm woken up by the change of watch. Unable to go back to sleep but somehow unwilling to reveal myself to Beetee, I lie in the sand with my eyes closed and listen to Finnick's breathing, to Peeta's and Katniss' as they slowly drift into sleep. No; that's wrong. The already steady breathing is on the wrong side of me. Finnick must have traded places with one of the others partway through their watch.

After a while I begin to hear a new sound over my allies' breathing and the sounds of the Arena. It's a soft, anguished sound, and eventually I realise that it is Beetee crying. There is an immense sense of intruding on some incredibly personal and private moment. Fighting my instinct to do the decent thing and reveal my presence, I stay stock-still and force myself to ignore it. Sleep, when it finally comes, is welcome.

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><p>Beetee wakes Finnick and I up for third watch a few hours later, face as impassive as usual. There's no sign that he's been crying and I give no sign of knowing, once again hit by the sense that I've witnessed something I shouldn't have. The two of us sit side by side in friendly silence but say little. Eventually the others wake up; Peeta first, followed by Beetee, and finally Katniss.<p>

She hasn't been awake for long before another parachute drifts down beside us. It contains twenty four more of those rolls, which we combine with the left over ones and split so that we get five each. Eight left. No one comments on how evenly they'll split with one more of us gone, but from the looks on people's faces everyone seems to be thinking it.

After we eat Peeta and Katniss go off to the edge of the water and talk amongst themselves. Everdeen claims she's teaching him to swim but I don't believe that for a second. So as she goes through the motions of teaching him the strokes – but without making him take the flotation belt off, I notice – I keep a careful eye on them. After a while of nothing more than swimming lessons the boredom begins to get to me and my eyes start getting heavy. I didn't end up getting all that much sleep last night, anyway. Taking a nap wouldn't do any harm.

I'm woken up by Finnick.

"Come on, get up. Beetee's got a plan."

In other words, he's got a way out of the Arena disguised as a plan to get rid of our enemies. Fine with me; I want to get out of this place as much as anyone else does. Especially since I'm not dead yet.

I join the others where they're standing on the sand. Beetee kicks us backwards to give him room to draw and roughly sketches a circle divided into twelve – a map of the Arena.

"If you were Brutus and Enobaria, knowing what you do now about the jungle, where would you feel safest?" he asks.

Peeta is the first to reply. "Where we are now. On the beach. It's the safest place."

"So why aren't they on the beach?"

Well that's obvious, isn't it? "Because we're here."

"Exactly," Beetee says. "We're here, claiming the beach. Now where would you go?"

"I'd hide just at the edge of the jungle. So I could escape if an attack came. And so I could spy on us," Everdeen says.

"Also to eat," Finnick adds. "The jungle's full of strange creatures and plants. But by watching us, I'd know the seafood's safe."

"Yes, very good. You do see." The words would be patronising if it were anyone else delivering them, but Beetee's tone seems genuine. Maybe it comes by necessity of being smarter than most people you associate with; but then again, maybe not. If it were Johan or Marchessa talking to us they'd definitely have that characteristic arrogance in their voices. "Now here's what I propose: a twelve o'clock strike. What happens exactly at noon and at midnight?"

"The lightning bolt hits the tree," Katniss says, winning an award for stating the obvious.

"Yes. So what I'm suggesting is that after the bolt hits at noon, but before it hits at midnight, we run my wire from that tree all the way down into the saltwater, which is, of course, highly conductive. When the bolt strikes, the electricity will travel down the wire and into not only the water but also the surrounding beach, which will still be damp from the ten o'clock wave. Anyone in contact with those surfaces at that moment will be electrocuted."

There's silence as everyone struggles to wrap their minds around the plan. None of us can understand it; we haven't got the training for it. It doesn't sound all that plausible to me, but if Beetee says it'll work then we should believe him, because he's our only chance. And anyway, this is just his decoy plan to get us all out of here. It doesn't matter if it works or not, not that I'd be able to tell the difference.

Peeta, though, doesn't know his reasoning as well as I do. "Will that wire really be able to conduct that much power, Beetee? It looks so fragile, like it would just burn up."

"Oh, it will," says Beetee. Because that's so reassuring. "But not until the current has passed through it. It will act something like a fuse, in fact. Except the electricity will travel along it."

Now that seems off. "How do you know?"

Even Beetee's surprise is mild. "Because I invented it. It's not actually wire in the usual sense. Nor is the lightning natural lightning nor the tree a real tree. You know trees better than any of us, Johanna. It would be destroyed by now, wouldn't it?"

I have to agree with that. Back in Seven there are plenty of trees that have been struck by lightning. None of them have survive unharmed.

"Don't worry about the wire – it will do just what I say," Beetee says.

"And where will we be when this happens?" asks Finnick.

"Far enough up in the jungle to be safe."

Now that problem with that is obvious. Katniss points it out before I can, though. "The Careers will be safe, too, then, unless they're in the vicinity of the water."

"That's right."

"But all the seafood will be cooked," says Peeta.

Beetee nods. "Probably more than cooked. We will most likely be eliminating that as a food source for good. But you found other edible things in the jungle, right, Katniss?"

"Yes," she says. "Nuts and rats. And we have sponsors."

"Well then. I don't see that as a problem. But as we are allies and this will require all our efforts the decision of whether or not to attempt it is up to you four."

Well, we have to, don't we? I kind of like being alive, thanks, and like the idea of throwing something into the Capitol's faces even more. But if I'm too eager to go along with the plan it will look suspicious, so I look around at the others as if doubtful.

"Why not?" says Katniss. "If it fails, there's no harm done. If it works, there's a decent chance we'll kill them. And even if we don't and just kill the seafood, Brutus and Enobaria lose it as a food source, too."

"I say we try it," Peeta agrees. "Katniss is right."

Finnick looks at me. It's my decision, his look tells me. But really, there's only one thing I can chose and he knows it. "All right. It's better than hunting them down in the jungle anyway." I smile slightly, even though there's really nothing to laugh about. "And I doubt they'll figure out our plan, since we can barely understand it ourselves."

"I'd rather go and have a look at the tree now so that I can see exactly what I have to do," Beetee says.

There's nothing else we can do anyway but wait for District Two to find us. And it's far too close to ten o'clock for my liking. So we set off, the end of the Games so close I can almost taste it.

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><p><strong>Here's a challenge for you readers – points to anyone who figures out why Beetee's wire shouldn't be physically possible. Extra points to anyone who does that and then explains to me why it works under the laws of physics anyway. I'd kind of like to know.<strong>


	14. Chapter 13

**So yeah. As usual, thanks for all your kind reviews – I hope everyone continues to enjoy the fic.**

**As for the issue with the wire; well, electricity stops conducting the second the circuit is broken. Not to mention if it were only a wire rather than a cable you wouldn't have a complete circuit, though we can assume Beetee's planning to ground the wire on the other side of the forcefield. And, of course, you can't have 'a fuse, but for electricity'. Metallic wires don't quite act in the way that this is described to, either. Finally – if electricity breaks the forcefield, how did they get the lightning into the Arena? (His made-up plan wouldn't work either; there's a reason lightning doesn't kill fish, but that can be excused by the fact that it's meant to be a distraction and doesn't have to actually work.) Hahukum Konn gave me a way out of part of it by suggesting that the wire conducts enough current to spark the reaction before it starts to melt and breaks the circuit. But that doesn't quite explain everything either.**

**However, Beetee also says, "It's not actually wire in the usual sense." What this does open us up to is the idea that it's not a METAL wire; instead, some kind of polymer that only looks like metal to Katniss and Johana's and the Capitol's untrained eyed. Even nowadays polymers that can conduct electricity exist. Or maybe it isn't electricity itself that breaks the forcefield, but a specific chemical reaction occurring within this polymer which deactivates the forcefield; this seems a lot more likely, since it'd be harder to deactivate accidentally. This reaction would be sparked off by the electricity which would create a chain reaction. As far as I'm aware there's no part of Chemistry which says that can't happen; just nothing actually showing it happening. It's easier to go 'oh yeah, we discovered a new type of chemical reaction' than go 'hey guys, we're kind of breaking the laws of Physics here'.**

**Um. Well. Yeah. Sorry for the ramble, guys. I hope you didn't get too bored. And if anyone has anything to add feel free to leave it in the comments – I'm off school for the year now, so an intellectual discussion would be a nice change :) **

**Anyway. On with the show.**

**NOTE FROM LATER: I changed around the fight scene a bit, since a few people pointed out to me that it was contradicting a bit of MJ. Which is kind of my fault - I can practically recite the Games half of CF by now and know my way around THG itself almost as well, but I've only actually read MJ once. I'm planning on re-reading it before I start writing the bit of Johanna's story that intersects with it. So yeah. Thanks to GrossGirl18 and MarbleSharp for pointing that out. *sheepish look*  
><strong>

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><p>Our route up to the tree at the twelve o'clock section takes a lot less time than I remember from the similar trek that first day, which suddenly seems a lot further away than the day before yesterday. Having only one invalid and four fit people seems to change a lot.<p>

As we near the tree Finnick suggests that Katniss should take the lead, claiming that she can hear the forcefield – but only with the ear the Capitol reconstructed, she hurriedly clarifies. Beetee, who should know these things, seems to think it could happen, and Finnick backs her up by saying that he's seen it happen himself. Even with her super-hearing, though, she makes us wait below the tree while she tosses nuts at the forcefield to see where it is exactly.

Once we get to the tree we divide up tasks. Beetee, obviously, needs to examine the tree and Finnick volunteers to guard him while he works. Katniss says she'll hunt the rats she's seen around the place. It'll make a change from eating fish. Peeta and I are left with choosing between nut duty and water duty; I take the latter.

I spend the next little while tapping for water, drinking the water and lugging around baskets of water to give to the others to drink. At the ten o'clock wave the two from Twelve start roasting the nuts and chunks of rat by letting them fall onto the forcefield. I do one more water run and return to the others just in time to see Beetee throw a bit of the tree's bark into the forcefield. It returns to land on the ground, glowing. That 'bark' definitely isn't wood.

Soon we hear that clicking from the eleven o'clock sector. It's much louder than it was last night, and equally as spine-chilling. Peeta shudders slightly; none of the others look very pleased at the sound. We all stop working to listen anyway.

"It's not mechanical," Beetee says decisively after a few moments.

"I'd guess insects," Katniss says. She pauses before adding, "Maybe beetles."

"Something with pincers," adds Finnick. Thanks, Finnick. I really wanted that mental image.

The sound gets louder and I have to force myself not to react visibly. "We should get out of here, anyway," I point out. "There's less than an hour before the lightning starts."

Everyone eagerly agrees with me, and we have a short discussion about where to go next. Beetee ends that one by saying he'd quite like a close observation of what happens when the lightning hits, so we head over to the one section whose effects I've experienced first hand. Peeta hands out the food he and Katniss have prepared and we much on it while waiting for twelve.

"I'd like one of you to climb a tree and observe the lightning strike for me," Beetee says a bit before twelve.

"I can't," Peeta says quickly. He gestures downwards apologetically. "Not with this leg."

"It should be one of the girls," agrees Finnick. Traitor. Even if he has a point.

I'm far too comfortable on my bit of log to want to move, so I make Katniss do it. She comes back down after the lightning strike and describes what she saw to Beetee, who seems pleased. Now it's getting far too close to one o'clock for our liking, so we head downhill and into the next section simultaneously. After hitting the beach we loop around clockwise until we reach the ten o'clock segment. The sand is still a bit damp from the wave a few hours ago but nobody complains; it could be so much worse.

"Well, we've got a while to kill," Finnick says once we get there. "Anyone have any ideas?"

"I'd like a while to myself," Beetee tells him. "To have a final look at the wire and finalise plans."

"We should try and get some sleep," Peeta suggests. "I get the feeling we'll need our energy later."

When District Two are dead and the alliance breaks, is what I bet he's thinking but doesn't say. I can't really blame him. It's not like he knows about the plan.

So the four of us spend the next few hours alternating between sleep and watch duty. Three or four hours into it, though, we decide that no one's going to manage to get anymore rest and look around for something else to do.

"We can get food," I say, after a few minutes of bored restlessness. "It'll give us something to do, at least."

Peeta nods. "That's not a bad idea. Make a feast of it; it's our last chance for seafood here."

"It'll be our last supper," I quip.

There's an uncomfortable silence which is broken by Finnick, who organises the four of us. He shows the Firekids how to gather selfish and dive for oysters before going to stand knee deep in the water a slight distance away from them and using his trident to spear fish. I stand watch and practise using both axes at the same time to stave off the boredom.

I'm playing another game of 'let's kill the president' in my head when Peeta and Katniss suddenly burst into laughter. Finnick, who seems confused, comes over to talk to me as the laughter abruptly stops.

"What was that about?" I ask him.

He shrugs, mystified. "Something about coals turning the pearls. They seem to think they do, that is."

"And do they?"

At his glance of disbelief I shrug defensively. "What? It's not like I've ever worked with either."

He fakes a melodramatic sigh. "No, Johanna. They don't turn to pearls. Pearls come from oysters."

Leaving the two from Twelve alone to the moment Finnick tells me they're having, the two of us lay out the food. Beetee notices the activity and wanders over to help, and soon the five of us are settling down to our meal. Once again, we get given another twenty four District Three rolls; looks like the plan hasn't changed. This time there's also a small pot of spicy red sauce. I can't tell if it's some kind of code I don't know about or just something to make the food taste better. Or both.

After tossing the leftover food into the ocean so that none of the others can get to it there doesn't seem much else to do but wait. Peeta and Katniss sit at the edge of the water, holding hands. The rest of us give them their space and stand in a group pumped full of nervous energy.

"Am I the only one with the distinct impression of being a third wheel?" Beetee asks Finnick and I as we look down at them.

Finnick shakes his head. "No, I've got that feeling too."

As do I. Which is odd, because it's not something I've been picking up off the two of them before. I'd always thought that their romance was an act, a love story for the cameras. Thought that, and judged them accordingly. But now, looking down at them, I'm not so sure.

I shake my head to clear it of the sappiness and change the subject. "Volts, are you sure your plan will work?"

"We've been over this, Johanna. It will." He pauses. "Well, it should."

"Very reassuring," I mutter loud enough for them to hear me.

"Look," Finnick says, a tad more harshly than he usually speaks. "It's our best shot. I thought you were agreed."

"I was," I say, and none of the three of us are talking about frying the saltwater lake anymore. If we even were originally.

"Was?"

"And am."

Beetee nods, satisfied. "When we're up there, I may ask you to do things that run counter to what you think we should do. For this to work I need you to trust me. Both of you."

Finnick nods silent agreement. I do too, but also say, "And you'll help me in return, right?" For the benefit of the cameras I add, "Truce if not allies until there's only us three left?"

"It's agreed," says Beetee.

As the hours pass until we can set our final trap and get out of this stinking place for once and for all, I allow myself to look to the future we're working for. The future I'm less than a day away from achieving.

* * *

><p>After the anthem – without any faces today – we abandon our camp and start the trek towards the lightning tree. It's slower going this time than last, probably because the food from our feast is making its presence felt for everyone. Still, we make it to the tree in decent time. Beetee recruits Finnick to help him while District Twelve and I stand guard. Just after the wave hits the two of them stop passing the wire back and forth around the tree and call us over.<p>

"There's one more aspect to my plan that I didn't mention earlier," Beetee says, and I remember his words from the beach. "I need you two" – indicating Katniss and I – "to take the spool of wire down to the beach, unwinding the wire as you go, and to drop it in the water. And then to get out of there before the lightning hits."

There's immediate protest. Firegirl's face shows what looks like betrayal; Peeta's isn't much better. My face probably has some shock showing as well. It's well deserved – I always thought I'd be up here, near the edge of the Arena, when we broke out of it. But now Beetee's sending me to the other end of it. I'm not stupid. Hovercraft can't travel that quickly. This is going to lower my chances of getting out of here.

But it's not like I can back out now, not without looking suspicious to everyone – the Firekids, the Rebellion, the Capitol. I'm going to have to tag along and hope that Volts keeps his word. And I'll be with Everdeen, I remember. There's no way the rebels will leave without their precious Mockingjay. As long as I stick close to her I'll be safe.

"I want to go with them as a guard," Peeta demands.

Beetee shakes his head and hands the coil to me. "You're too slow. Besides, I'll need you on this end. Katniss will guard. There's no time to debate this. I'm sorry. If the girls are to get out of there alive, they need to move now."

"It's okay," says Katniss, and you can't tell whether she's reassuring him or herself. "We'll just drop the coil and come straight back up."

"Not into the lightning zone," Beetee reminds us. "Head for the tree in the one-to-two-o'clock sector." And now he's giving the rebels instructions on where to pick us up from. Maybe this isn't as bad as it seemed. "If you find you're running out of time, move over one more. Don't even think about going back on the beach, though, until I can assess the damage."

I nod as Katniss attempts to reassure Peeta. "Ready?" she asks me after taking her hands off his face.

"Why not?" I shrug. "You guard, I'll unwind. We can trade off later."

"Okay," she says, and we head off down the hill.

Our trek down to the beach is mostly silent. The only conversation is whenever we trade between winding and guarding; the former is the harder job. Oddly enough the silence isn't entirely uncomfortable. Maybe the Girl On Fire isn't so bad, I think, before erasing the thought from my mind. She won Vince's Games, and now she gets away with everything. Of course she is that bad.

About halfway down the hill the clicking starts up and I shudder involuntarily. As eerie as the sound is, it's also a reminder of our time clicking away.

"Better hurry," I tell Katniss. "I want to put a lot of distance between me and that water before the lightning hits. Just in case Volts miscalculated something."

"I'll take the coil for a while," she replies.

I pass it over. "Here."

Both our hands are still on the coil when it shudders. Before we even have time to react a mass of shiny hair-thin metal springs down onto us. Dimly I realise that Katniss has let go of the coil, but I've got other things to observe. The wire. It's been cut. This wasn't part of the plan.

My mind races, and so does my heart. I force myself to focus; I've only got a few seconds to act. If the wire's been cut it means that District Two have finally caught up to us. Or else one of the others have decided not to ally themselves with the rebellion, but I doubt it. We're in too deep now.

Doesn't matter either way. Have to move, now, or else it'll be too late. Katniss – no, Everdeen, have to think of her that way now - exchanges glances with me and reaches for her arrows. I think and act simultaneously, lifting the metal spool of wire which I'm still holding and whacking her in the back of the head. She's small, smaller than me, District Twelve malnourished even after a year of victor-food so it's easy to knock her down.

Before she even realises what's happening I'm on top of her, pinning her down, clamping a hand over her mouth in case she screams and brings whoever it is onto us more quickly. I reach for my knife and her eyes, slightly hazy from the blow, widen. The knife is about to pierce her skin when I remember the tracker. Have to get that out. Might as well fell two trees with one swing.

As I dig around in her shoulder to try and find the tracker chip, ignoring her gasps of pain, I finally have the time to finally think about what I'm doing. Not killing Everdeen, as much as I once wanted to. Helping her, as much as she doesn't know it. The rebellion won't take me with them if I leave their Mockingjay to die, so I have to keep her alive. Leave her close enough to death that the only two people left in this Arena not involved with the plot won't bother with finishing her off. And I get to cause her some of the pain she's caused me. That's always a plus.

Finally that elusive chip is out of her arm. She's bleeding heavily, so I run my hand along the wound and swipe the blood over her face. If I'm making her seem dead I might as well do it properly. I can hear the soft crunch of people trying to walk silently in a forest and not quite managing it. I'm almost out of time.

"Stay down!" I hiss at her, before running off and hoping that my handiwork is enough, although I do make sure to stay within earshot of the body in case my improvised plan doesn't work.

But sure enough, I hear Brutus' voice. "She's as good as dead! Come on, Enobaria!"

And that's my cue to run. So run I do, making a bit more noise than I could to make sure they follow me. District Thirteen will be able to fix me up if I just stay alive for these next few hours, but there's no way they're taking me if they don't take Katniss Everdeen too. So really, this is in my best interests. As I sense District Two on my tail, though, it doesn't feel like it.

I try and steer us uphill and through dense bush. Up the hill means closer to Finnick and an ally in the fight. They should have felt the wire break. The denser bits of bush give me an advantage; I'm naturally thin and anyway I grew up around forests, even if they're completely different types. And with two Careers, one of whom is Enobaria freaking Moreno, on my back, I'm going to need every single advantage I can find.

The running takes its toll. Soon I'm slowing down; so are they, but not by enough. If I don't start to fight back now then I'm dead when they catch up. Though I'm probably dead either way. Screw this. I'd rather die from something I can see than a knife to the back.

So when I reach an especially dense bit of jungle I turn around and reach for my axes. They can't see me in here, I don't think, so it gives me an extra few seconds of advantage. Their footsteps get louder. Soon I'll have to fight. And probably die, but I'm not thinking about that.

As I see Enobaria come into view I swing my axe and feel a small surge of satisfaction as it makes contact with her arm. This is followed by an equally small surge of panic as she turns to me and bares her pointed teeth. She throws a knife with her other arm and I dive out of the way, quickly having to repeat the manoeuvre as she throws again and again.

Then there's Brutus on my left and I lash out with my foot before he can do anything. A knife again. I dodge and kick and swing my axes around but this isn't like it was in my Games. Two on one, for one, without my surprise advantage. And these two both won their Games for a reason – they're better fighters, especially when I'm outnumbered. So I dodge knives and block Brutus' sword and try to get a few hits of my own in.

"Johanna! Katniss!" I hear. Finnick's voice. Here comes the reinforcement.

"Up here!" I yell back, ducking under a sword stroke and swinging the axe at Brutus' thigh. "Little busy; could really use your help."

There's the sound of Finnick crashing through the undergrowth. He'll be up here to help soon. I just need to stay alive until then. So I give up on striking back and just focus on dodging and blocking. A knife skims my ear and I gasp in pain. Force myself to ignore it. Soon. Soon he'll be here and I'll have a fighting chance. Just hold on.

Finally I can see Finnick with his trident racing towards us. He yells something to get their attention, and in the distraction I swing the axes at Brutus several times in rapid succession, forcing him away from Enobaria. At the same time Finnick picks her to fight with and now it's one on one again.

I'm intent on fighting Brutus, which is a much more even match now, and by the time I look up Finnick's gone, taking Enobaria with him. Brutus uses my looking elsewhere to strike with his sword. I duck under its swing but overbalance and end up on the ground with a sword at my throat. So this is it. I'm going to die.

Or not. I'm still holding onto an axe. I bring it swinging up to his thigh once and then again. The sword loosens and I roll away from it, still holding the axe, and to my feet. The two of us fall back into the cycle of swing and block, stab and dodge.

"Need a hand?" Chaff, of all people, has turned up and joined the fight. I've no clue how or why, but I won't say no to a bit of help. He was part of the rebellion plot, after all. Probably got the same message we did.

Without asking he launches himself at Brutus. And now it's two on one, to me. How things change. The three of us fight for a bit longer with no one really getting anywhere. We're all tiring out, though. More likely for someone to make a stupid mistake.

And Chaff does, leaving himself wide open for Brutus' sword to go through his chest. As the man from Two pulls the sword out, I swing at his neck. The axe goes into the bone and stays there. I get the axe free as Brutus gets the sword free, but though that swing hasn't killed him it's weakened him quite a bit. In another swing from the blunt end of the axe I've knocked him to the ground. I could kill him, but it's not like he can move. He'll die soon anyway, in slow painful agony. Give him a taste of his own medicine, I decide bitterly.

That's when the knife slices through his back. I look up to find Peeta there. His face twitches before he forces it to stay straight. This is the second person he's killed out of mercy, I realise, remembering his Games, and feel a twinge of guilt at being so willing to extend Brutus' pain.

Two cannon shots. That means that everyone else is still alive, for now. Only one more unpredictable element. And Katniss, who probably thinks we're her enemies now. Oops.

Peeta glares at me. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you now."

"I'm still on your side," I assure him. Not that he'd be able to kill me anyway – if it comes down to it I'm probably the better fighter. And he doesn't have the guts. He can put people out of their misery, sure, but Mr Pure and Innocent Fireboy wouldn't be able to kill someone in a straight up fight.

"Prove it."

"Katniss is okay. I lead District Two off her tail. Which is, you know, kind of why I was fighting Brutus. I'm sorry"- I'm not – "but you're going to have to believe me."

He isn't satisfied. I can tell it from his face.

"Look," I say flatly, "if I wanted to kill you then you'd be dead already. Or at least in the middle of a fight for your life."

"Okay, you win. I presume the cannon shots were for these two?" He gestures down at the two dead bodies. We're still here, so the hovercraft can't have come in yet.

I nod. "What happened to you guys?"

"They ambushed us at the tree. District Two, I mean. Beetee is down but I don't think he's dead. They didn't bother checking; bet they thought they could finish him later. Finnick told me to hide and ran off to find you guys." He sighs impatiently. "Look, we're wasting time. I want to find Katniss."

She won't be where I left her, that's for certain. She wasn't that wounded.

"Let's go to the lightning tree," I say. "She'll head up there to check on us."

He nods agreement and starts the trek up, yelling for her at the top of his voice.

"Shut up, you idiot," I snap. "Do you want to bring Enobaria down on us?"

He glares at me but at least quietens down. We've barely started walking when the Arena lights up. The lightning strike. And I think we're still in the zone. Oh, crap.

Only this isn't a normal lightning strike. The Arena just explodes. Trees go flying. So does the ground. So do Peeta and I, in opposite directions. The sky's exploding too – fireworks, meant to distract the population from the chaos. So this was Beetee's plan. He could have warned me.

I scramble to my feet, dazed from the impact, and run towards Peeta to pull him up. Behind him in the sky I can see the familiar silhouette of a hovercraft. These must be the rebels. Here's our ride.

"Come on," I snap, and pull Peeta along with me as I race towards the hovercraft.

"Johanna, are you insane?"

"I know what I'm doing. Just run for the hovercraft."

He tries to argue, but my grip on his wrist is firm. Stupid Fireboy. He's slowing me down. I might miss my ride because of him, but I have to keep him alive as much as Everdeen. Not even because he did anything useful, but because she wants him alive. And anything the Mockingjay wants, she gets.

We're getting closer to the hovercraft, each step being one more towards freedom. We just have to run this, have to make it in time, and then we'll be on our way towards District Thirteen. Almost there. Almost.

And then a knife lodges into the tree in front of me. Enobaria. She's here.

"Run for the hovercraft!" I yell at Peeta. "I'll hold her off."

I move backwards, blocking her blows and ducking knives while trying to head towards the hovercraft. Peeta isn't moving quickly enough; I yell at him to speed up. Instead, he slows down and topples over. Something faintly metal glimmers in his skin.

I feel a jab in the back of my neck. Not a knife. I just have the time to look up and see the second hovercraft above us before I black out.


	15. Epilogue

**I'll have a proper A/N at the end. Because, yeah...**

* * *

><p>She wakes up in a white room. Completely, blindingly white and empty other than a raised podium at one end with two thin stands sticking out of it. There are several cameras displayed prominently, and speakers. She knows that there are probably many more hidden where she can't see them.<p>

This definitely isn't District Thirteen, she thinks. Dammit. All her work for nothing.

A door opens out of the featureless whiteness and several masked people come in. They wield guns, and wear body armour. A part of her is pleased that there is all this security just for one victor, even as she desperately reaches for a weapon that isn't there to try and find a way out.

It is only now she realises she is naked. Not that it matters, really.

A sound rings across the room. Gunshot. She freezes, just for a second, but it is enough. Two of her captors grab her by the arms and drag her towards the raised podium. She struggles all the way. It doesn't do anything; they are stronger, and the third member of the party now has his gun trained on her again.

Like they'd really shoot her when she could be so useful. But she likes being alive more than she fancies being dead, so she is wary of it all the same. It might be what makes the difference; but then again, it might not. She's here now. All she can do is tough it out and hope that the rebellion considers her important enough to send a rescue mission.

Her hands are clicked into the stands on the podium. At the same time restraints rise out of the floor to connect around her feet. The painted metal is ice cold against her bare skin, but she refuses to shiver. She won't give them the satisfaction of seeing weakness.

The three people leave the room, their job evidently done. Nothing happens. She looks around the room. There's not much to see. The walls are as white and as featureless as ever; they are not even marked from the gunshot. A lone deformed bullet lies on the floor, which is as uniform as the walls with the exception of a series of pin sized holes dotted around the podium area. It is the only evidence that someone else has even been here.

She wonders how long they'll make her wait. Maybe this is some kind of trick of theirs. Drag out the time before talking to the prisoner. Make them sweat. Drag out the anticipation, and soon enough they'll come up with ideas of what you're going to do to them. Ideas much worse than anything you have the imagination or the resources to come up with. By the time you talk to them, they'll be willing to tell you much more.

Only it won't work on her, she thinks with some triumph. She's figured them out. So she passes the hours by resolutely not thinking about the future. Notices a shallow circular groove at the edges of the podium, and deliberately doesn't ponder on what it is for. Focuses her attention on the little deformed bullet, the odd thing out. Tries to ignore the cramp that is beginning to form from spending so long in one spot.

It startles her when the loudspeakers in the corners of the ceilings crackle to life after a forever of waiting for something to happen. She had expected humans in person. Though really, she shouldn't be surprised at the distance. This is the Capitol; they would never get their hands dirty in person when it could be avoided.

The voice that emerges is the President's, of all people. "Miss Mason. I trust you have had a pleasant stay so far."

She ignores the insincere words. "Come to question little old me in person, have you? I'm so honoured."

"I am glad. However, enough of the pleasantries. I am sure that you know why we are here."

"Actually I don't," she says, deciding to play dumb. "But I'm sure you're dying to tell me."

"Apt words, Miss Mason. It would be rather… regrettable if they were to apply to anyone you know."

She glares up at the nearest camera. "You've already tried that trick once, Snow. It's not going to work."

There is no response from the President. The wall in front of her turns into a screen, displaying images. Peeta Mellark, curled up naked in a room identical to her own. Annie Cresta, with Peacekeepers dragging her from her home in District Four.

Johanna forces contempt into her voice. "I'm not Everdeen or Fi- Odair. What happens to the two of them doesn't matter. Not to me."

The screen switches to District Seven, the camera following Blight around. She is almost worried – and curses herself for feeling that way – before spotting a vaguely familiar dark-haired bowl cut in the corner of a frame. It belongs to Adric Stone, somebody she'd never actually spoken to but recognises as a member of Aaron Quincy's bomber squad. He'd been on the list of casualties from the failed uprising earlier this year. This is old footage, she realises, and feels a burst of triumph for her District. They must be causing enough chaos for Snow to not want to show her any images.

"Go on," she says. "Show me more. Where's Blue-y? I'd hate for him to miss out on all the fun."

"If you cannot be persuaded to show simple compassion for your fellow humans, Miss Mason, so be it. What do you know about what occurred in the arena of the Seventy Fifth Hunger Games?"

She fakes innocence. "What do you mean, what happened? It was a normal Games. I'd just turned on Everdeen – I needed to break away from that alliance, you see, and ended up fighting Brutus. I was on my way to find other people and then the sky exploded."

She knows her story isn't fooling anyone. She'd made her allegiance rather clear through her actions in the Quell. On national television, no less. But she might as well buy time. It's not like she's planning on telling Snow anything anyway.

If Snow is discouraged by her responses, his voice doesn't show it. "Let me rephrase, then. What do you know about District Thirteen?"

"What everyone knows. It was bombed during the rebellion and has been a nuclear wasteland ever since. Why?"

He ignores her question. "So are you saying you know nothing?"

She nods. "Exactly."

"So can you provide us with an explanation of your actions in the recent Quarter Quell?"

"I was doing what seemed best for my survival."

Still no reaction from Snow. He keeps questioning in his almost eerily calm voice, and she denies all knowledge of everything he asks for. His fall is the one thing she has left to live for. She's not going to compromise it now.

When he finally gives up on the questioning it's almost a relief. She'd been wondering when they'd start torturing her for a while now – because the thought that they'd do anything else hasn't even crossed her mind. This is the Capitol. They've never been reluctant to use pain before.

A large metal pipe descends from the ceiling to rest in the groves around her. She's completely engulfed in the darkness. Another trick of theirs, she thinks, to try and keep her mind off the anticipation. Keep you in the dark so that you can't see what will happen, so that you're left guessing. Well it's not working, not on her, she thinks as her muscles tense.

Just when she's decided that this is purely psychological she feels a jet of water hit her head and shoulders. The shock of it knocks the air out of her and she only has time for a quick gasp before the water's over her head. She holds her breath. Struggles against her bonds, though she already knows it'll do no good. Her lungs burn and she forces herself to keep the air in. She's not drowning, not now.

They need her alive, anyway. All she has to do is hold on to the lungful of air until they decide that she's in danger of dying and drain the water. She's too useful to let die. She holds onto the thought with the air. Not much longer. It can't be too much longer. They don't want her to die. So don't breathe. Not too long now.

Finally, finally, when she's almost given up, the pipe rises back up to the ceiling, letting the water spill out onto the floor. She spends a few seconds gasping for air. Salty water drips into her mouth; she spits it out in the direction of the cameras, forces herself to stand tall.

"Is that it?"

No reply from the speakers. Nothing for a long moment. And then the pain begins.

**End of Book Two**

* * *

><p><strong>So yeah. This is then end – but rest assured, there will be a sequel. It might be a while before it goes up, but I'll try to make sure you don't have to wait too long.<strong>

**Trivia time and acknowledgements: the torture technique was inspired by 'The Happiness Patrol', which is a Seventh Doctor-era serial of Classic Doctor Who, though I adapted it quite a bit. **

**Thanks to everyone who stuck by me through Fearful to Fearsome and Saving Fire, as well as to all you later readers. I might write for myself, but I post for you guys :)**


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